Winner of the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize 2025
unRavel
Marsh Hawk Press, Available May 2026
“In an age when we get lost in the particulars, unRavel boldly embraces a cosmic perspective. I marvel at the ability of this work to span vast stretches of time and space with precise, elegant language and a quick, playful intelligence. UnRavel is a book that revels in the uncertainty of knowing where we are and where we’re headed collectively and, closer to home, personally. One poem describes “cartographic failures,” while another cooly states “the mirage arrives/twice daily/telling us we’re/using the wrong maps.” Trusting the tools of sound and intuition, these poems take a human measure of the universe. This writing is filled with somber misgivings and stunning beauty. Even when we are lost, there is a sense of adventure and awe in our lostness.”
—Elaine Equi, Contest Judge of the 2025 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize
An Atlas of Lost Causes
Kelsey Street Press, 2011
“Marjorie Stein’s An Atlas of Lost Causes brings one right to the brink of and then through what great books are supposed to do: give us that charge of recognition we so long for. In this world we are and are no longer misfits, indeterminate twin sisters, murderers, lonely folks born “somewhere between the Industrial Age and the Information Age,” wondering what it is to be human, what it is to be handed one life, and yet experience it so polymorphously. Smart, charming, disarming (“Some people may consider this good funeral weather” and “knowing no amount of language can cure the hole”), this is a book for the age and the ages.”
—Gillian Conoley