TUPELO PRESS PROUDLY ANNOUNCES THE RESULTS OF THE 2026 DORSET PRIZE

Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that OUTSKIRTS by Allison Pitinii Davis of Wheeling, West Virginia has been selected by Sabrina Orah Mark to receive the 2026 Dorset Prize.  Allison Pitinii Davis receives a $3,000 cash prize, a writing residency, publication by Tupelo Press, and national distribution.

Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD, is the author of the poetry collection Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017); Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize; and Business, a novella in Agency 3: Novellas (Baobab, 2025). Her creative writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Best American Poetry, POETS.org, The Oxford American, The Georgia Review, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University's Wallace Stegner program, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and elsewhere. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry at Ohio State University, where she was named the 2025-2026 English Graduate Organization Professor of the Year. She is from Youngstown, Ohio and currently lives in Wheeling, West Virginia. 

Judge’s Citation:

If you ever wondered how prose could hang onto a poem for dear life, or wind around it like strange and gorgeous backroads, or be hinged on its frame like a door opening wider and wider look no further than OUTSKIRTS where further and further is right here where you are.  Formally stunning, OUTSKIRTS imagines a new poem made out of edges.  These poems have jumped off their poem cliffs and rather than soar they have become gorgeous new cliffs they can land on.  Come sit beside me on these poem cliffs.  Isn't the view breathtaking?   

—Sabrina Orah Mark

Finalists:

collective by Katie Berta of Tempe, Arizona. 

The Advent Lyrics by Will Brewbaker of Durham, North Carolina. 

The Family:  A Drama by Matthew Buxton of Chicago, Illinois. 

The Mask of Dahlias by Jose Hernandez Diaz of Norwalk, California.  

A Pale Green Star by David Gorin of San Francisco, California. 

Ofrenda by Anaïs Deal-Márquez of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  

American Etymologies by Matthew Minicucci of Northport, Alabama. 

Phantom Ride by Lauren Myers-Hinkle of Evanston, Illinois.  

KAMA ‘ĀINA by Lana Reeves of Nashville, Tennessee.  

#TheRebelSonnets by Bino Realuyo of New York, New York. 

Notes on a Pomegranate by Jen Siraganian of San Jose, California. 

Tipping Point by Stephanie Strickland of New York, New York.  

How One Thing Leads to Another by Kathleen Winter of Glen Ellen, California.  

In the Dark and In the Sea by Barbara Tomash of Berkeley, California.  

Semifinalists:

Ibid. by Jacob R. Benavides of Stillwater, Oklahoma. 

Bystander by Talia Bloch of Brooklyn, New York. 

Most Like Ourselves in Translation by William Coleman of Alton, New Hampshire. 

The Sacred Harp by C. Violet Eaton of Boise, Idaho.  

If the End is the End by William Fargason of College Park, Maryland.   

HINGE by John Gallaher of Maryville, Missouri.  

The Hudson Lines by Sarah Heady of San Francisco, California.  

All My Treasures by Fatima Jafar of Stanford, California.  

Nightgown Years by Sally Rosen Kindred of Columbia, Maryland. 

Against Reason by Johanna Magin of Montreuil, France.  

Marriage And by Gary McDowell of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  

Adventures of Populace by Matthew Moore of Athens, Georgia.  

Little Pest by Kim Parko of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

Broken Animal by Henk Rossouw of Concord, Massachusetts. 

The Visible Remains by John De Stefano of New York, New York.  

All My Buried Things Beaming by Samantha Samakande of Ithaca, New York. 

Strange and Constant by Max Schleicher of Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Myth of the Apex of Light by Heewon Seo of London, Great Britain.  

Pearl by Talin Tahajian of Belmont, Massachusetts. 

Orange Blossom Sugar: The Story of Marie LaFarge by Emily Wilson of Ashville, North Carolina.  

To Make Bearable Whatever ThisIs by Rewa Zeinati of Dearborn, Michigan. 

We wish to congratulate Allison Pitinii Davis, our distinguished finalists and semifinalists, and all who entered manuscripts in the Dorset Prize for delighting us with a stunning number of terrific submissions. By your writing, each of you joins in the solitary and so-important work of making poetry. Many, many thanks to our judge, Sabrina Orah Mark, for blessing us with the so-very-hard (and largely unsung) work of selecting a winner and for writing a superbly thoughtful citation. 

Please bear in mind that the Berkshire Prize for a First of Second Book of Poetry is open now, judged by Beth Bachmann. See submission guidelines here.