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The submission period for the 2027 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry has closed for the year. We will announce the winner and finalists here and on social media in January. The 2026 winner, Debris Field by Rachel Rothenberg, which you can preorder from Persea at this time, will be published in April.
This contest is held in commemoration of poet-activist Lexi Rudnitsky, whose posthumous book of poetry, A Doorless Knocking into Night, will be reissued by Persea in April. Click here for more information and complete eligibility guidelines.
NeW & Forthcoming
Soul Cake by Lisa Russ Spaar
The poems in Lisa Russ Spaar’s seventh full-length collection wrest from their rich, sumptuous, surprising lexicon flashes of dread, beyonding, and gnosis.
Bind bySandra Meek
“Meek’s prescient poetry has long dwelled darkly on humanity’s environmental impact.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Amerigun by Anne Marie Macari
In her heartrending sixth collection of poetry, Anne Marie Macari communes with a brother decades gone and calls out a gun-obsessed America has enabled countless similar deaths.
From hospital rooms to dive bars, Don't Let It Kill You by Theo LeGro confronts the complexities of loss and mortality with ferocity and wit. With language that refuses to flinch or flatter, these poems tells the truth about sickness: How boring it is. How brutal. How sacred. The poems do not seek to inspire. They do not resolve. They testify.
Arguments by Benjamin Gucciardi
Winner of the 2025 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award
“Poems to make you think and cry and maybe love.”
—Rebecca Solnit
Bewilder Meant by Kimberly Grey
“Bewilder Meant vibrates throughout with a sensuous shimmer and virtuosic thinking.”—Maureen N. McLane
NEWS & Updates
Acclaimed poet Patrick Rosal has been named the 2026 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Per the Guggenheim’s website, “The Poet-in-Residence program seeks to create poetic experiences that deepen public engagement with the museum, its architecture, and its collections, while fostering a sense of community and shared experience.”
Rosal is the author of five full-length poetry collections (all with Persea), including The Last Thing: New & Selected Poems, which won the William Carlos Williams Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His next collection, Prayers from the Protosonic, will be published in May 2027.