RUNNER-UP FOR THE 2024 ARTHUR SMITH POETRY PRIZE
In her debut collection, No Lace Fronts in Iowa City, Meghan Malachi explores how community, desirability, and notions of home influence the journeys by which girls come of age. These poems celebrate a South Bronx childhood and navigate a complicated womanhood in the Midwest through confessional musings on Black Latinx identity and intimate epistolary interludes. Favorite wigs, main character moments, and reimagined anti-heroines are all vessels for exploring girlhood in this love letter to female kinship. No Lace Fronts in Iowa City is ultimately a testament to the desires for belonging and tenderness that we all harbor.
Autorentext
Meghan Malachi is a poet and writer from The Bronx, New York. She is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor's Prize Contest and runner-up of the 2024 Princemere Poetry Prize. Her collection No Lace Fronts in Iowa City was selected by Allison Joseph as runner-up for Madville's 2024 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. Her chapbook The Autodidact was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. Meghan has an MS in Mathematics from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing from DePaul University. She is an associate editor at RHINO and lives in Chicago, Illinois.