Aimee Nezhukumatathil
2) Oceanic
"Nezhukumatathil's poems contain elegant twists of a very sharp knife. She writes about the natural world and how we live in it, filling each poem, each page with a true sense of wonder." —Roxane Gay
"Cultural strands are woven into the DNA of her strange, lush... poems. Aphorisms...from another dimension." —The New York Times
"With unparalleled ease, she's able to weave each intriguing detail into a nuanced, thought-provoking
...Lucky Fish travels along a lush current — a confluence of leaping vocabulary and startling formal variety, with upwelling gratitude at its source: for love, motherhood, "new hope," and the fluid and rich possibilities of words themselves.
4) Bite by Bite
Selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Danni Quintos carves a space for brown girls and weird girls in her debut collection of poems.
Two Brown Dots explores what it means to be a racially ambiguous, multiethnic, Asian American woman growing up in Kentucky. In stark, honest poems, Quintos recounts the messiness and confusion of being a typical '90s kid—watching Dirty
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