WINNER: Aaron Herschel Shapiro - “A Formal Feeling”

“ 'A Formal Feeling' borrows its title from Emily Dickinson, whose own formal feeling comes 'after a great pain.' Leading with intelligence that discloses moments of personal and profound loss, 'A Formal Feeling' is cooly observant and movingly understated. I admired the Dickinsonian precision of this poem’s fathoming of faith and felt more than a little bit wrecked when 'God kept his distance, / tending to the breeze that blew the daffodils apart.' ” - Cecily Parks (Porch Prize Poetry Judge)

Aaron Herschel Shapiro is a poet and essayist living in Murfreesboro, TN, where he teaches courses in undergraduate writing and literature, along with courses in Jewish and Holocaust studies, for the English Department of Middle State Tennessee University. He is a frequent contributor at Poetry in the Boro, and his work has appeared in SWING, Shift, ArtWire, Dandelion Scribes, Reckoning: Tennessee Writers on 2020, and elsewhere.

RUNNER UP: Reed Turchi - "Some Things Teach You How to Lose"

‍Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of national bestseller The American Daughters, a New York Times Editor’s Choice published by One World Random House; The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You; and We Cast a Shadow. He is the recipient of the 2024 South Arts State Fellowship, the 2024 John William Corrington Award, the 2024 Inaugural Tennessee Williams Distinguished Excellence in Literary Arts Award, the 2023 Louisiana Writer Award, and the Black Rock Senegal Residency. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a tenured associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.

John T. Edge, author of House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home, writes and hosts the television show TrueSouth and serves Garden & Gun as a columnist. His previous books include The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South. Edge teaches narrative nonfiction in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Georgia. At the University of Mississippi, he directs the Mississippi Lab, where he leads development of Greenfield Farm Writers Residency, and serves as writer-in-residence for the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. Edge lives in Oxford with his wife, the artist Blair Hobbs.
‍
Cecily Parks is the author of three poetry collections, including The Seeds, which will be published by Alice James Books in October 2025. The recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, she is the guest editor of Best New Poets 2025 and editor of the anthology The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses. Her poems appear in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Nation, The New Republic, several editions of The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State University and lives in Austin.

Fiction – Manuscripts can be a short story, flash fiction, or excerpt from a longer fiction work. Maximum 8,000 words.

Creative Nonfiction – Manuscripts can be personal essay or memoir. Maximum 8,000 words.

Poetry – One poem per entry.


John T. Edge, author of House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home, writes and hosts the television show TrueSouth and serves Garden & Gun as a columnist. His previous books include The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South. Edge teaches narrative nonfiction in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Georgia. At the University of Mississippi, he directs the Mississippi Lab, where he leads development of Greenfield Farm Writers Residency, and serves as writer-in-residence for the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. Edge lives in Oxford with his wife, the artist Blair Hobbs.

Cecily Parks is the author of three poetry collections, including The Seeds, which will be published by Alice James Books in October 2025. The recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, she is the guest editor of Best New Poets 2025 and editor of the anthology The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses. Her poems appear in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Nation, The New Republic, several editions of The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA Program at Texas State University and lives in Austin.

$15.

Contact swingeditors@porchtn.org with any questions.



Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of national bestseller The American Daughters, a New York Times Editor’s Choice published by One World Random House; The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You; and We Cast a Shadow. He is the recipient of the 2024 South Arts State Fellowship, the 2024 John William Corrington Award, the 2024 Inaugural Tennessee Williams Distinguished Excellence in Literary Arts Award, the 2023 Louisiana Writer Award, and the Black Rock Senegal Residency. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a tenured associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.