He will receive $10,000 and, upon editorial approval, the finished book will be published by the &NOW Books imprint of Lake Forest College Press, with distribution by Northwestern University Press. He will also take part in the Eleventh Annual Lake Forest Literary Festival and offer a series of public presentations while in residence at the College.

Christopher Rey Pérez is the author of the chapbook, On the Heels of Our Enemies, which was published by 98Editions in Beirut. He has lived and written in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. Currently, he lives in Palestine, where he teaches at al-Quds Bard Honors College and edits the small journal, Dolce Stil Criollo. He is originally from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize is awarded to an author under forty years old with no major book publication. This year the winner was selected by guest judge Eleni Sikelianos, a poet, memoirist, and translator. Her books include Your Animal Machine, The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead, The California Poem, and Body Clock, all published by Coffee House Press. She lives in Boulder, Colorado and is Professor of English at the University of Denver, where until recently she directed the creative writing program.

Of Pérez’s manuscript, Sikelianos writes: “LOVE PANT ALIEN orbits and surveys this wicked star we tend with such exuberance, love, strife, humor, catastrophe. It is fully aware that what we take for a star is really our earthly planet, rife with human disaster, yet is still willing to limn it with light. These poems, graced with the fresh ebullience of César Vallejo’s ghost, live on the troubled earth and among the angels, shuttling news between worlds.”

The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize is made possible by a donation from a local philanthropist who was impressed by the College’s recently established publishing enterprise, Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books. The previous winners are:

• Jessica Savitz, author of Hunting Is Painting, a book of poetry 
• Gretchen Henderson, author of Galerie de Difformité, a novel 
• Jose Perez Beduya, author of Throng, a book of poems 
• Elizabeth Gentry, author of Housebound, a novel 
• Cecilia K. Corrigan, author of Titanic, a book of poems 
• Matthew Nye, author of Pike and Bloom, a novel (available Fall 2015)

The Plonsker Prize will be on hiatus for the 2015 and will return the following year. More information on the Plonsker Prize can be found here. Inquiries should be directed to andnow@lakeforest.edu with the subject line: Plonsker Prize.

The 2014-2015 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize Finalists:

Winner:

Christopher Perez, al-Quds, Palestine: LOVE PANT ALIEN

Runner-up:

Wendy L. Burk, Tucson, AZ: Transcripts of Tree Talks

Finalists (in alphabetical order):

Johnny Damm, Athens, GA: The Old Man’s Illustrated Library

Amy Harrison, Bothell, WA: The Bearded Ballerina

Hailey Higdon, Nashville, TN: Quiet Speak Quiet