Adam O. Davis and Micah Dean Hicks win 2025 Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prizes

The winner of the 2025 Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry is Adam O. Davis for “Pyrrhic Symphony,” chosen by guest judges Rowan Ricardo Phillips and Hilda Raz with Timothy Schaffert, Glenna Lushei Editor-in-Chief of Prairie Schooner. Davis will receive a $3,000 award and publication by the University of Nebraska Press.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips praised Davis’s poetry, writing, “Pyrrhic Symphony is wild, whip-smart, and irreverent—a maximalist elegy for late capitalism and ecological disaster, set to a beat both comic and catastrophic. It’s part Muriel Rukeyser, part Anne Carson, with a dash of HBO satire and TED Talk dystopia. Its central conceit—a series of poetic ‘dispatches’ from a world breaking under the weight of its own consumption—is sustained across dazzling poems like ‘Future Tense’ and ‘Anthropocene Cool.’”

Davis is the author of Index of Haunted Houses (Sarabande, 2020), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Prize and the 2016 George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and he has received grants and fellowships from Columbia University, the New Literary Project, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, and the Vermont Studio Center. Program for Writers, and the Vermont Studio Center. His work has appeared in AGNI, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and ZYZZYVA, among other journals, and in a number of anthologies, including The Best American Poetry and The Once and Future Lake: Stories for Great Salt Lake. Davis is also co-creator and host of the podcast Poetry Goes to the Movies, along with its digital collection for the Poetry Foundation. He lives in San Diego where he teaches English literature at The Bishop’s School.

This year’s finalist manuscripts for poetry are “A Fire in Her Brain” by Jennifer Franklin, “In the Name of Whatever Country This Is” by Cecilia Woloch, “The Shape of a House” by Laura Donnelly, “Welcome World” by Elizabeth Poliner, and “Change Faster” by D.E. St. John.

The winner of the 2025 Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction is Micah Dean Hicks for his manuscript, “Vulture Gold,” chosen by Schaffert and guest judges DeMisty Bellinger and Eric Wat. Hicks will receive a $3,000 award and publication by the University of Nebraska Press.

DeMisty Bellinger praised Hicks’ stories, noting that the collection “is a gratifying read, satisfying all the desires of good story collection. Modern fairy tales are nothing new, but the author still finds space to venture in new areas, challenging expectations and norms. The characters in each story are strong and diverse, the stories themselves are beguiling in premises and execution. Furthermore, the storytelling is resplendent in effective imagery and moving with measured pacing.”

Hicks is the author of the novel Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones and the story collection Electricity and Other Dreams. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship and has been awarded the Calvino Prize. His writing has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The New York Times, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Hicks grew up in rural southwest Arkansas. He now lives in Tampa where he teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the University of South Florida.

This year’s finalist manuscripts in fiction are “Where We Came From” by Sakena Abedin, “Goose Update: Stories” by Kaylie Saidin, “Trespassing: Stories” by Shah Tazrian Ashrafi, and “The Singing Bones of Braehouse: A Novella and Stories” by Marjorie Sandor.

The competition runs from Jan. 15 to March 15 annually. Submission details are available online. Previous winning poetry and fiction books are available through the University of Nebraska Press.

Founded in 1926, Prairie Schooner is a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It publishes fiction, poetry, essays and reviews by beginning, mid-career and established writers. Visit the Nebraska Foundation site to support Prairie Schooner and the Raz-Shumaker Book Prize.