Kevin McLellan’s Sky. Pond. Mouth. won the Granite State Poetry Prize , selected by Alexandria Peary, and it is being fast-tracked for publication by YAS Press to coincide with the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival at U.N.H. on April 13, 2024.

The Granite State Poetry Prize is a $5,000 publication prize given annually for a previously unpublished poetry collection of extraordinary quality written by an emerging or established New Hampshire poet. Housed and managed by the University of New Hampshire’s English Department, the Prize is made possible through the generous support of the YAS Foundation in honor of poet and poetry lover, Nossrat Yassini.

This year’s guest judge is acclaimed poet and New Hampshire State Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary.

The winner of the 2024 Granite Poetry Prize will receive $5,000, book publication (20 copies + a standard royalty contract), a headline reading/book launch at the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival (April 12-14, 2024), and a national spotlight on their work.

Kevin has forthcoming poems or prose in: Action, Spectacle; The Arkansas International; Barnstorm Journal;  Conduit; ellipsis; Grist; Jelly Bucket; Louisville Review; The McNeese Review; and Paperbark. He has recent poems in Ninth Letter; From the Belly: Poets Respond To Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (anthology); The Experiment Will Not Be Bound: An Experimental Anthology of American Writing (anthology) ; and In the Tempered Dark (anthology).

Kevin‘s videos “Afterparty” and “Inside: After Being Acted Upon” showed at Festival Angaelica and “It Fell” showed in the Nature & Culture Film Festival (Stockholm, Sweden; Helsinki, Finland, Copenhagen, Denmark) and the Worldthreading Film Festival (Denmark, Finland and Sweden). On February 9, it will be shown on an outdoor snow screen at the International Festival of Winter Cinema (IFWC).

The IFWC showcases outstanding films submitted by artists from around the world. These filmmakers often have fascinating stories to tell and IFWC encourages you to learn more about the creators and the making of their films. IFWC is the world’s greatest free outdoor winter film festival. Every year, they screen winter, mountain, polar, indigenous, and local films at our snow theatre!