Congratulations to Kelly Michels on American Anthem being selected for the Forward Prize shortlist for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection!
Also on the Forward Prize shortlist are:
I cannot be good until you say it by Sanah Ahsan (published by Bloomsbury Publishing )
Inheritance by Jasmine Cooray (published by Bad Betty Press )
The Wrong Person to Ask by Marjorie Lotfi (published by Bloodaxe Books )
Food for the Dead by Charlotte Shevchenko Knight (Jonathan Cape Books )
To find out more about the shortlisted poets visit https://forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry/
The Forward Prizes Ceremony will take place at the Durham Book Festival and online on Thursday 10th October. All the shortlisted poets will be invited to perform before the winners are revealed.
American Anthem proclaims a new voice in Irish poetry. It is an outstanding, bold and brave first collection.
Blending lyric and narrative modes the dominant strands of American Anthem focus on the tragedies, both personal and national, of the opioid epidemic and its devastating effects of addiction and of gun violence in America where the author grew up.
Blending lyric and narrative modes the dominant strands of American Anthem focus on the tragedies, both personal and national, of the opioid epidemic and its devastating effects of addiction and of gun violence in America where the author grew up.
Kelly Michels relocated to Ireland from the United States in 2019 and completed her PhD at UCD. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Tampa Review, Best New Poets and New Ohio Review. She has published two pamphlets, Mother and Child with Flowers (2012) and Disquiet (2015), and has received the Rachel Wetzsteon Poetry Prize from 92nd Street ‘Y’, the Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. She lives in Dublin.
American Anthem is available in all good bookshops or online from The Gallery Press.
