2020 HONICKMAN BOOK PRIZE WINNER
Chessy Normile, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party
Chessy Normile has been selected for the 2020 APR/Honickman First Book Prize award. Her manuscript—Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party—was chosen by guest judge, Li-Young Lee from over 900 submissions.
Book reviewer August Smith describes Normile' voice as "both familiar and fresh... not unlike reconnecting with your cleverest friend after years apart... There's a friendly, unaffected openness in her language: I am 1,000 times more shattered / than I have ever been before / barring like ten other times."
Chessy Normile received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets University Prize in 2018. Her poems appear in Narrative, jubilat, The Journal, poets.org, Poetry Daily, among others. Chessy currently lives in New York and edits a zine series called Girl Blood Info.
Chessy's book was published in September 2020 and distributed by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium.
Author photo by Courtney Allen