Midwest Gothic, written by poet Laura Donnelly, won the 2019 Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, selected by Maggie Smith. This poetry collection embraces the dreary beauty of the Midwestern world and uplifts the commonality of daily life with delicate yet dark language. Delving into childhood imagination, perceptions, and fairtales with poetic themes of nature, the beauty of the seasons, family inheritance, mythology, and tradition. At the forefront of this collection is the representation of death and rebirth.
"Laura Donnelly's first book of poetry, Watershed, won the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors' Prize, and her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Missouri Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Passages North, PANK, Mississippi Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she teaches poetry writing and literature and serves as the director of Oswego's visiting writers series.
Originally from Michigan, Donnelly received an MFA from Purdue University and a PhD in English/Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. Her work has been supported by fellowships and scholarships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo, the I-Park Foundation, and the Sewanee Writers Conference.
She lives in Oswego, New York, with her husband Ben and a calico cat named Sue."
