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2015 Chapbook Fellow Anders Carlson-Wee

Anders Carlson-Wee is a 2015 NEA Fellow. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Best New Poets 2012 & 2014, and elsewhere. He is the winner of Ninth Letter’s 2014 Poetry Award and New Delta Review’s 2014 Editors’ Choice Prize. A recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Residency Fellowship, Anders is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University.

 Carlson-Wee on winning the 2015 contest: 

“I am deeply honored and thrilled to have Dynamite selected for the 2015 Frost Place Chapbook Contest Sponsored by Bull City Press. As a young poet just finishing the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, this opportunity means the world to me. I am equally grateful to attend The Frost Place Poetry Seminar in August and offer a reading from the chapbook, and to have the rare chance to spend a week writing at The Frost Place this coming fall. And there’s a bonus: New Hampshire is a new state for me! For this I am grateful to The Frost Place Board of Trustees, advisers, and community.  Also, I’d like to offer my overwhelming gratitude to Jennifer Grotz for selecting the manuscript, and to Ross White for believing in it. Special thanks to my brother Kai Carlson-Wee, Edgar Kunz, Mark Jarman, Rick Hilles, Beth Bachmann, and Kate Daniels for close readings of the poems. And many thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts and Vanderbilt University for support during the time this chapbook was completed.”

2015 Final Judge, Jennifer Grotz, on the winning manuscript:

“The poems in Anders Carlson Wee’s Dynamite are, as their title suggests, dramatic and volatile, filled with an explosive and masculine energy. And yet it’s the subtle but ever-surfacing lyricism radiating out from stunning understatements coupled with precise and nuanced detail that makes these poems unforgettable. Dynamite is a collection that first affects the reader strongly and swiftly—and then achingly and hauntingly over time. I look forward to reading more of this wonderfully promising poet.”