Winners of The 2025 Best Spiritual Literature Awards

Every year, Orison Books publishes Best Spiritual Literature, 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 The anthology also includes previously unpublished work by the winners of The Best Spiritual Literature Awards. (Subscribe here.)

We are pleased to announce the winners and finalists for The 2025 Best Spiritual Literature Awards! The winners will each receive $500 and publication in the 2026 volume of Best Spiritual Literature.

NONFICTION

Winner: Amy Lutz, "Umbraphiles"

Selected by Athena Dixon

Judge's Citation: "'Umbraphiles' was a revelation to read. Full of tenderness toward both the self and the world at large, the work unfurls from a need to belong, to find common ground, and to be loved without condition or caveat. Whether moving through the wonder of a solar eclipse or the murkiness of the dating world, the journey is warm and inquisitive. The author asks us to consider who we are within the scope of our internal lives as well as the scope of the world and how the faith that guides us can leave us with questions about what it means to belong and the answers to those questions, too. 'Umbraphiles' asks readers to step outside of themselves to examine their relationships with the ideals that guide them and how those ideals translate to a world that may at times be isolating and lonely."

Finalists: Kit Carlson, "Merely a Breath"; Kathleen Melin, "Snow Globe"; Gabriela Valencia, "Diminutives"

FICTION

Winner: Jyotsna Sreenivasan, "The Wind and the Sun" Selected by Halle Hill

Judge's Citation: "All good stories and perhaps all religious experiences center around origins; who we are, who we come from and how we got here. 'The Wind and the Sun' blends these questions in a poignant and subtle narrative of antiquity and modern times, working to find their place in one intergenerational family. How do we understand mercy and new life among those who have hurt us? What makes a family? 'The Wind and the Sun' is a bright story full of weariness, life, and hope in a maybe-future."

Finalists: Kate Lister Campbell, "Ape Opus"; Noah Weisz, "Festival of Lights"; Rolf Yngve, "A Corner Room"

POETRY Winner: Sharon Dolin, "Breaststroke"

Selected by Yehoshua November

Judge's Citation: "In the final lines of his poem 'On Swimming,' Adam Zagajewski writes, 'palms join and part...almost without end,' likening a swimmer’s motions to that of a worshiper at prayer. The poem 'Breaststroke' draws upon the swimmer’s mechanics as a figurative representation of prayer as well. In this case, however, the 'forward' and 'backward' motions of the swimmer’s body serve as an extended metaphor for exploring how an attempt to get close to the Divine entails progress and setbacks, nearness and distance. 'Breaststroke' reminds us of the counterintuitive truth that both types of movements prove equally necessary if one is to 'propel' forward toward transcendence. The poem’s form–its unfolding syntax and long sentences that hold and blend several opposite motions–skillfully echoes the poem's content." Finalists: Ayelet Amitay, "Hineni"; Judith Chalmer, "Psalm in sleeping bag"; Colleen S. Harris, "Mercies of the Body"; Jed Myers, "Strawberry Moon"; Anne Evans, "An Invitation"; Anya Kirshbaum, "Psalm for the Woman in the Mirror"; Kathy Nelson, "Change of Weather, High Desert"; Kathryn Weld, "The Lost Keys"

About the Winners

Left to right: Amy Lutz, Jyotsna Sreenivasan, Sharon Dolin

Amy Lutz writes about serious things in funny ways. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and has worked for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, though at the moment she's using her graduate degree to fold clothing at Costco. She lives near Nashville with her dog and two cats in an apartment full of air purifiers. She is working on a memoir about Complex PTSD.

Jyotsna Sreenivasan's latest book is These Americans, a collection of short stories and a novella about Indian Americans published in 2021 by Minerva Rising Press. It is a bronze winner in the Foreword Reviews INDIES Awards. An earlier version of the novella was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. Her novel And Laughter Fell From the Sky was published in 2012 by HarperCollins. She received an Individual Excellence Award from The Ohio Arts Council in 2022, and was selected as a Fiction Fellow at the 2021 Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Sharon Dolin is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Imperfect Present (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022); a prose memoir, Hitchcock Blonde (Terra Nova Books, 2020); and two books of translation from Catalan: Book of Minutes by Gemma Gorga (Oberlin College Press, 2019) and Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems by Gemma Gorga (Saturnalia Books, 2021), winner of The Malinda A. Markham Translation Prize and a Finalist for The 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship, AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, Pushcart Prize, and Witter Bynner Fellowship, Dolin is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press and teaches poetry workshops in New York City.