FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO (October 2, 2024)— The editors of Narrative have awarded Madeleine Cravens the 2024 Narrative Prize, given annually for the best work by an emerging writer published in the previous year in Narrative. Cravens, originally from Brooklyn, New York, earns the prize for October Phone Call and Other Poems. The Narrative Prize has been awarded every year since Narrative’s launch in 2003, and Cravens is the twenty-sixth recipient of the prestigious award.
In honoring Cravens with the Narrative Prize—which includes funds of $5,000—Narrative cofounder and editor Carol Edgarian remarked, “Madeleine Cravens’s sinuous plainsong celebrates the enduring mysteries of desire. How does one reconcile, and indeed transcend, the pull of our passions and pleasures with daily life? Her poems are musical and transgressive, vulnerable and bold. I cannot wait to see where her next questions take her.”
I want to know how things will end. I’ve heard of the beginning,
how grains of pollen fell from the poplars. Then a little choral
music, cavalry, bright skirmish on the hillside, a thousand
years of this. Here is a flute and here is a steamship. Here is a gun
and your grandmother’s ring. The devil has seven blue heads,
and when we draw him on the inside of the chapel, each one
tells a different lie.
—from Object Permanence
Cravens holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University, where she was a Max Ritvo Poetry Fellow. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is the author of the poetry collection Pleasure Principle, which was recently published by Scribner. She lives in Oakland, California.
The Narrative Prize, which recognizes writers whose talent and accomplishments place them at the forefront of a new generation of storytellers, has been awarded to twenty-four previous winners, including Morgan Talty, Tryphena Yeboah, Gbenga Adesina, Paisley Rekdal, Javier Zamora, Ocean Vuong, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Natalie Diaz, Anthony Marra, Maud Newton, Michael Dickman, Saidiya Hartman, Mermer Blakeslee, and Min Jin Lee. See all the winning works here.
ABOUT NARRATIVE:
Founded in 2003, Narrative, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership across generations, in schools, and around the globe. As the premier digital publisher of first-rank fiction, poetry, essays, and art, each year Narrative publishes hundreds of well-known and emerging writers. The Narrative for Schools program supports teachers and students around the world, who are too often hampered by limited resources, by providing free reading, lesson plans, video tutorials, and the annual Narrative High School Writing Contest to inspire the next generation of readers and writers. Narrative for Schools programming reaches 120,000 students and teachers in schools worldwide—in thirty-six countries and throughout the US. Narrative was founded on the conviction that there should be no socioeconomic barriers to accessing great literature. Our ever-expanding modern library of thousands of stories, poems, and essays is free to all.
FOR MORE INFORMATION about Narrative, contact editors Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian.
