Results of The 2025 Orison Chapbook Prize

We're pleased to announce that Luke Hankins, founder and editor of Orison Books, has selected "No Sudden Bright Way," a poetry collection by Kathryn Knight Sonntag, as the winner of The 2025 Orison Chapbook Prize from hundreds of anonymous submissions. Sonntag will receive $300 and publication of her chapbook.

Hankins has selected "Each Time You Carry Me This Way," a poetry collection by Jennifer K. Sweeney, as the Runner-Up. Sweeney's chapbook will also be published.

We are also pleased to recognize the following outstanding finalist manuscripts:

FINALISTS

"Autoethnography" by Dom Blanco (poetry)

"After Goya's Basement Paintings" by William Harris (fiction)

"Epilogue" by Tikva Hecht (poetry)

"Another Evening Lowdown" by Brian Heston (poetry)

"Fractured World" by Greg Huteson (poetry)

"How to Love a Sinking Island" by Lana Reeves (poetry)

"A Blue Hour" by Joel Tomfohr (fiction)

"Here There Are Lions" by Carol Traynor-Mayer (poetry)

ABOUT THE WINNER & RUNNER-UP

Kathryn Knight Sonntag is the author of The Mother Tree (Faith Matters Foundation, 2022), winner of The 2022 BIBA Literary Award in Non-Fiction: Religion, and of the poetry collection The Tree at the Center (BCC Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Image, Colorado Review, and the anthology Blossom as the Cliffrose (Torrey House Press, 2021), among other places. Her master’s thesis focused on the role of the transcendent in landscapes and greatly informs her creative pursuits. She works as a freelance writer and landscape architect, and serves as the poetry editor for Wayfare.

Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of six poetry collections, including Redwood Communal (forthcoming, Green Writers Press), the collaborative chapbook Dear Question: A Conversation, with L.I. Henley (Glass Lyre Press), and Foxlogic, Fireweed (Backwaters Press). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, The James Laughlin Award, The Backwaters Prize, The Perugia Press Prize, and The Terrain Poetry Prize. Jennifer teaches poetry at the University of Redlands in Redlands, California, where she has lived for fifteen years. 

ABOUT THE ORISON CHAPBOOK PRIZE

The Orison Chapbook Prize, judged by Luke Hankins, Orison Books' founder and editor, is open for submissions in any genre each year from April 1 – July 1. The winner receives $300 and publication. Finalists are also considered for publication. Find complete details here.