UNBOUND
EMERGING POET AWARD
Since 2020, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, Unbound has awarded an annual cash prize to celebrate the work of a promising poet at the start of their career. Every year, we look forward to introducing festival goers to another new and brilliant voice during their poetry reading.
2025 Honoree:
m.s. RedCherries
m.s. RedCherries received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a JD from Arizona State University College of Law. She is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. Her debut collection, mother (Penguin Books) was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Past Honorees
2024: Nisha Atalie
Nisha Atalie is a poet and organizer. Her poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, Blood Orange Review, Yalobusha Review, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “Do/Do Not” placed third for the Academy of American Poets’ Treehouse Climate Action Prize. Her nonfiction writing has appeared at Rampant. Her biggest inspiration is the ongoing, centuries-long struggle to decolonize the world and uproot racial capitalism. Nisha is based in Chicago, on occupied Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi land. More of her work can be found at nishaatalie.com.
2023: Maria Isabelle Carlos
Maria Isabelle Carlos is a writer and editor from Missouri. She has received support from UNC-Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt University, the Lambda Literary Foundation, Tin House, Storyknife Writers Retreat, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the editor of Inch from Bull City Press, an assistant nonfiction editor of Zone 3, and she works at Haymarket Books. Find her work at mariaisabellecarlos.com.
2022: Angela Hume
Angela Hume newest book, Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open (AK Press, 2023), tells a story of Bay Area abortion defense — from feminist clinical practice, to underground abortion provision, to street politics and clinic defense — from the 1970s to 2000s. Her full-length books of poetry include Interventions for Women (Omnidawn, 2021) and Middle Time (Omnidawn, 2016) and she is also co-editor of the anthology Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field (U of Iowa P, 2018). Angela teaches writing at University of California, Berkeley.
2021: Lupita Eyde-Tucker
Lupita Eyde-Tucker writes and translates poetry in English and Spanish. Her poems appear in Nashville Review, Columbia Journal, Raleigh Review, Women's Voices for Change, Yemassee, Rattle, and [PANK]. She is currently translating two collections of poetry by Venezuelan poet, Oriette D'Angelo.
2020: Sojourner Ahebee
Sojourner Ahebee writes stories about African diaspora identities and the eternal question of home and belonging. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, The Academy of American Poets (Poem A Day), Muzzle Magazine, For Harriet, Winter Tangerine Review, Apiary Magazine and elsewhere. In 2013 she served as a National Student Poet, the nation's highest honor for young poets presenting original work.