Every year, Orison Books publishes Best Spiritual Literature (formerly The Orison Anthology), a collection of the finest spiritually engaged writing that appeared in periodicals the preceding year. The anthology also includes previously unpublished work by the winners of The Best Spiritual Literature Awards.
Orison Books is pleased to announce the winners and finalists for The 2022 Best Spiritual Literature Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, & Poetry! The winners will each receive $500 and publication in the 2023 volume of Best Spiritual Literature.
FICTION
Winner: Alan Sincic, "Potato Boy"
Finalists: Allison Grace Meyers, "Each by Name" & Stanley Patrick Stocker, "Contrition"
NONFICTION Winner: Ed Madden, "Jerome Leaning Over His Book" Finalists: Teresa Janssen, "Journey Home" & Deb Liggett, "Knit"
POETRY Winner: Rose DeMaris, "The Pelican" Finalists: Laura Reece Hogan, "Via Negativa: Corpse Flower"; Jen Stewart Fueston, "Fundamentals"; Lois P. Jones, "Once for each thing. Just once; no more."; Perla Kantarjian, "the pomegranate bursts in red"; Fran Markover, "Uncle Julius Gifts me with Awe"; Jemma Leigh Roe, "Lazarus"; Betsy Sholl, "Kenosis"
About the Winners
A teacher at Valencia College, Alan Sincic’s fiction has appeared in Boulevard, New Ohio Review, The Greensboro Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Hunger Mountain, Prime Number, and elsewhere. Excerpts from The Slapjack (an unpublished novel for which he is seeking representation) have won The 2021 First Pages Prize, The 2022 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, and The 2021 Rash Award in Fiction.
Poet and essayist Ed Madden is the author of four books and four chapbooks of poetry. His fifth book of poetry, A Pooka in Arkansas, was selected for The 2022 Hilary Tham Prize and will be published by The Word Works in 2023. His work has been published in American Poets, Crazyhorse, Image, Poetry Ireland Review, Prairie Schooner, storySouth, and The Forward Book of Poetry. From 2015 through 2022, Madden served as the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC. He is recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and a 2019 artist's residency at the Instituto Sacatar in Itaparica, Brazil.
Rose DeMaris writes poetry, fiction, and essays. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Image, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Southern California, she spent many years exploring, teaching, and writing in Montana, and now resides in New York City. She is currently a Poetry MFA candidate and a Teaching Fellow at Columbia University.