Each year the Tucson Festival of Books offers a writing contest led by Meg Files, a volunteer who has taught writing to generations of student in Tucson and beyond. Judged by authors presenting at the festival, the contest offers recognition to emerging talent in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry. The top 50 contest entrants are invited to attend a Master's Workshop in Tucson facilitated by festival presenting authors on the Monday and Tuesday following the Tucson Festival of Books.
Congratulations to this year's winners and many thanks to our judges.
POETRY Judge: Laura Da’
First place: “Sleepless” and other poems by Isabel Lanzetta of Phoenix, AZ
Isabel Lanzetta's work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Oakland Arts Review, New Reader Magazine, Leviathan, Curios Magazine, and Convergence: Young Authors of Arizona, among others. Her poetry has been supported by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She holds a BA in English and Southwest Studies from Colorado College and is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at Arizona State University.
Judge: “This selection of poems is compelling, synesthetic, and formally innovative. A marigold blooms from a left hand, and ‘The liquor store glowed like one gigantic coyote eye over the sidewalk,’ in these polyphonic and richly layered poems.”
Second place: “Monster Days” and other poems by Bettina deleonbarrera of Portland, OR
Bettina deleonbarrera is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. She was born in Los Angeles, and raised by her grandparents and extended family in Guatemala and California. Her poems have appeared in The North American Review, The Santa Clara Review, New American Review, and other publications.
Judge: “Moments of compression and intensity in these poems create spaces for the surreal to unfurl inside closely observed patterns of place and time. Surprising and innovative, the imagery of these poems ‘expands the mental crust of labor’ and takes the reader to ‘the bottom of some place where eels first formed.’”
Third place: “4:40 am next to my father” and other poems by Steven Alvarez of Astoria, NY
Steven Alvarez is the author of the novels in verse “Manhatitlán,” “McTlán,” “Tonalamatl,” and the Fence Modern Poets Prize winning “The Codex Mojaodicus.” His work has appeared in the Best Experimental Writing, Anomaly, Asymptote, Berkeley Poetry Review, Fence, MAKE, The Offing, and Waxwing.
Judge: “These poems offer a complexity of content tempered by a directness of style. Frank engagement with narrative, authorial power, and sonic interest direct these lines allowing the reader to move from the clarity of a place of loss to one of ‘burning incantation.’”
NONFICTION Judge: Caleb Gayle
First place: “The Deepest Light” by Tara Kramer of Livingston, MT
Tara Kramer spent 15 years working in Greenland, Antarctica, and Canada for the US Polar Programs and Polar Bears International. Her prose and poetry have been featured with Alpinist, Patagonia, The Maine Review, Whitefish Review, and “Waymaking: An Anthology of Women’s Adventure Writing, Poetry and Art.” She received an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, has worked as an editor for USAID projects, and teaches writing at Montana State University and to US Forest Service avalanche forecasters.
Judge: “How does one make the supposed stillness of the literally glacial landscape of Antarctica both urgent and interior? You leave in the deft mind and hands of Tara Kramer whose memoir is necessary. I learned craft from Tara’s work.”
Second place: “Inexpressible Things of the Desert” by Lizbeth Bárcena of Los Angeles, CA
Lizbeth Bárcena is a writer, naturalist, and architectural designer from Southern California, currently pursuing an MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University. She’s a recipient of the 2025 Mari Sandoz Emerging Writer Scholarship. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in Burningword Literary Journal and El Portal. She volunteers for the Anza-Borrega Desert State Park and nonprofits in the Colorado and Mojave Deserts.
Judge: “Lizbeth’s scene work and recall are so immaculate that before she can invite us to inhabit her role as the protagonist of her tale, we find ourselves trapped in who she is and how she is transforming in a place we too often forget and overlook. Her work is a caution to not forget but rather to do our best to hold fast to both her subject matter and the force of her talent.”
Third place: “Wound Care” by Jason Prokowiew of Enfield CT
Jason Prokowiew received a PEN America/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History and Fulbright Scholar Award for “War Boys,” his braided memoir about his Russian father’s adoption by Nazis during World War II and the trauma he carried into parenthood. “War Boys” won the 2025 Aurora Polaris Nonfiction Award and will be published by Trio House Press this year. His writing has appeared in The North American Review, The Guardian, Salon, Roxane Gay’s Emerging Writer Series, “The Audacity,” Brevity, and is forthcoming in Under the Sun.
Judge: “Jason refuses the compulsion of us humans by denying us the easy closure. And in so doing, he invites us into this community of those, across generations, invested in wound care. We need Jason and we need the cultural work he is gifting to us.”
FICTION Judge: Laila Halaby
First place: “Hilda’s House” by Kim Merrill of New York, NY
Kim Merrill was a playwright who now focuses on prose fiction. Her plays have won awards and been produced regionally and off-off-broadway. Her experimental memoir “Red Girl Jumping,” a story of traumatic amnesia narrated by memory itself, won the 2024 Kenneth Patchen Award for Experimental Fiction and is scheduled for publication by Journal of Experimental Fiction press in January 2026. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, “Hilda’s House,” will appear in the online journal Action, Spectacle in March 2026. Her writing has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.
Judge: “‘Hilda’s House’ is a deft and moving exploration of loss. It offers us a deeply respectful and realistic look into the mind of a person who is no longer seen as she sees herself and the subsequent disconnect she experiences between her inner and outer life.”
Second place: “Be Gay, Do Crime” by Hal Wright of Phoenix, AZ
Hal Wright’s prose has been published by Pithead Chapel, Ninth Letter, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He’s working on a novel.
Judge: “While 'Be Gay, Do Crime' is jaunty and bold in tone and topic, it is at its core a brilliant snapshot of how challenging it can be to be seen as one is and live on one’s own terms.”
Third place: “When Pop Went on Vacation” by Linda Norlander of Seattle,WA
Linda Norlander is the author of “The Pines Were Watching,” the second Sheriff Red Mystery. Additionally, she has two other mystery series — A Cabin by the Lake Mysteries and Liza and Mrs. Wilkens Mysteries. She has published award winning short stories, op-ed pieces and short humor. Before retiring from a career in public health she authored “To Comfort Always: A Nurse’s Guide to End-of-Life Care.” It was awarded the ANA medical-surgical book of the year.
Judge: “‘When Pop Went on Vacation’ is a seamless unfolding of flawed characters doing their best to navigate unexpected turns and tragedy while still daring to dream of marvelous times.”
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