7 Collections of Prose Poems Recommended by D.S. Waldman

7 Collections of Prose Poems Recommended by D.S. Waldman

My students often have difficulty with the idea of a prose poem.  How do we define it?  How is it a poem and not just prose?  And in truth, I rarely have satisfying answers for them.  Part of what I love about the prose poem is its aversion to tidy definition.  It’s mysterious and amorphous.  It’s a you know it what you see it sort of thing.  

Prose is the everyday form; we encounter it not just in novels and textbooks, but also in our group chats, Instagram captions, emails, MTA service disruption alerts, the little pamphlets in the waiting room at the gastroenterologist.  And the prose poem, to me, uses that approachable, everyday form and charges it with the ancient, underlying current of capital-p Poetry.  There’s no formal trickery—no linebreaks, no rules or received forms—just the spoken voice, laid across the page, bound by nothing but that timeless lyric contract, the direct channel to the gods.

These seven are among my favorite collections of prose poems, books I keep within an arm’s reach of my desk.  They represent a range of what the prose poem is capable of, from frank retellings to criticism-infused confessionals to strange, elliptical leaping lyrics.  In all of them, though, we are welcomed into what I think is a more intimate relationship to the speaker, their voice unburdened by form and convention, free and ready to tell you something surprising.

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Meet Rua Morrow, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

The Black List recently announced the seven winners of its inaugural Unpublished Novel Award, introducing the world to seven writers across various genres from children’s and young adult fiction to adult crime, horror, and literary fiction.

Debutiful recently chatted with all seven winners and is excited to introduce the world to each writer, discover why and how they write, and learn more about the book that won them the award.

Meet Rua Morrow, winner of the Thriller & Suspense award for her manuscript, Pressure. Morrow is an Irish-American novelist who writes about climate science and the human psyche. In August 2025, Pressure was also a finalist in the Best Suspense category of the Killer Nashville Claymore Awards, which honor the best unpublished first fifty pages of a manuscript.

We asked Morrow to give readers a brief insight into his writing life and her Unpublished Novel Award-winning manuscript, Pressure.

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See the cover for Istanbul Dreaming by Denise Derya Brandt

See the cover for Istanbul Dreaming by Denise Derya Brandt

Istanbul Dreaming, the debut novel from Denise Derya Brandt, is a historical coming-of-age novel about a young Turkish woman who defies family, faith, and tradition to claim autonomy over her body and future in 1950s Istanbul, as the country strains between conservative values and emerging modernity. After fleeing an abusive arranged marriage, Ayten builds an independent life among working women in the city and begins a forbidden romance with an American airman, forcing her to choose between family loyalty and the freedom to define her own life.

Brandt worked in international development for more than twenty years and led women’s health projects in Afghanistan, Liberia, and Myanmar before starting to write fiction.

Istanbul Dreaming is set to be released by She Writes Press on September 29, 2026. It is available for pre-order now.

Debutiful is excited to reveal the cover, which was designed by Kat Black, along with a Q&A with Brandt about its creation.

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Inside the Collection: Kim Samek dissects I Am the Ghost Here

Inside the Collection: Kim Samek dissects I Am the Ghost Here

What makes a great short story collection? In Debutiful’s latest Q&A series, Inside the Collection, short story writers will take readers through their writing, editing, and sequencing of their debut short story collection.

In I Am the Ghost Here, writer Kim Samek shows readers contemporary life with a twist. Each story strips down the rituals and technologies that structure modern existence and bends them into the surreal. Prior to realising this, her short fiction won a Pushcart Prize and has been featured in GuernicaEcotoneElectric LiteratureNorth American Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, swamp pink, Gulf Coast, Southern Humanities Review, The Threepenny Review, Story, and ZYZZYVA. She also was a writer and television producer whose credits include MTV’s Catfish and PBS’s WordGirl and earned her Emmy nominations.

In our latest “Inside the Collection” Q&A, Samek dissects her debut short story collection, I Am the Ghost Here.

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Meet David Barringer, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

Meet David Barringer, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

The Black List recently announced the seven winners of its inaugural Unpublished Novel Award, introducing the world to seven writers across various genres from children’s and young adult fiction to adult crime, horror, and literary fiction.

Debutiful recently chatted with all seven winners and is excited to introduce the world to each writer, discover why and how they write, and learn more about the book that won them the award.

Meet David Barringer, winner of the Horror award for his manuscript, A Box Came For You. Barringer has done it all. He’s worked as a freelance journalist, lawyer, design writer, novelist, graphic designer, editor, photographer, and teacher. His screenplay Summer Clubbing, adapted from his own novel, was an Official Semifinalist in the Los Angeles Crime & Horror Film Festival 2021, a Quarterfinalist in the Screencraft Horror Screenplay Competition 2020, and an Official Selection in the HorrorHaus Film Festival 2020.

We asked Barringer to give readers a brief insight into his writing life and his Unpublished Novel Award-winning manuscript, A Box Came For You.

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See the cover for Bodega Stories by Amaris Castillo

See the cover for Bodega Stories by Amaris Castillo

Amaris Castillo was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dominican parents and credits the many tales she heard growing up to her love of storytelling. She became a journalist and created Bodega Stories, a multimedia series featuring real stories from the corner store.

She turned those stories into a non-fiction book also called Bodega Stories, which is a “window into a Dominican family’s bodega and the community at its heart.” The book, which will be published by the University of Florida Press on September 8, 2026, is now available for pre-order.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Bodega Stories, which was designed by Mindy Hill, along with a Q&A with Castillo about its creation.

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Meet Terah Tsuyako Summers, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

Meet Terah Tsuyako Summers, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

The Black List recently announced the seven winners of its inaugural Unpublished Novel Award, introducing the world to seven writers across various genres from children’s and young adult fiction to adult crime, horror, and literary fiction.

Debutiful recently chatted with all seven winners and is excited to introduce the world to each writer, discover why and how they write, and learn more about the book that won them the award.

Meet Terah Tsuyako Summers, winner of the Children’s and Young Adult award for her manuscript, More Than Quiet. Summers is a coordinator for a Hawai‘i-based mental health advocacy organization who started writing to articulate how she felt struggling with mental health. She says reading and writing “became my lifeline.”

We asked Summers to give readers a brief insight into his writing life and her Unpublished Novel Award-winning manuscript, More Than Quiet.

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Maybe the Body Poet Asa Drake thinks a lot about time and place when writing

Maybe the Body Poet Asa Drake thinks a lot about time and place when writing

Asa Drake was a 2024 National Poetry Series finalist and has received fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, the Florida Book Awards, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Storyknife, Sundress Publications, Tin House, and Idyllwild Arts. Her poems have been published with The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, and The Georgia Review.

Her debut poetry collection, Maybe the Body, explores the conflicts between art and patriotism, labor and longing. It is now available from Tin House.

We asked Drake to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her debut book.

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Meet Cam Terwilliger, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

Meet Cam Terwilliger, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

The Black List recently announced the seven winners of its inaugural Unpublished Novel Award, introducing the world to seven writers across various genres from children’s and young adult fiction to adult crime, horror, and literary fiction.

Debutiful recently chatted with all seven winners and is excited to introduce the world to each writer, discover why and how they write, and learn more about the book that won them the award.

Meet Cam Terwilliger, winner of the Literary Fiction award for his manuscript, White Flame. Terwillger lives in Brooklyn, where he currently teaches at New York University. His writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, Gettysburg Review, and Narrative, where he was named one of Narrative’s “15 Under 30.” With an MFA from Emerson College, he has also received support from Brown University, the Fulbright Program, James Jones First Novel Fellowship, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Public Library, Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and the Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences.

We asked Terwilliger to give readers a brief insight into his writing life and his Unpublished Novel Award-winning manuscript, White Flame.

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Meet Roz Ray, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

Meet Roz Ray, Winner of the Black List’s Unpublished Novel Award

The Black List recently announced the seven winners of its inaugural Unpublished Novel Award, introducing the world to seven writers across various genres from children’s and young adult fiction to adult crime, horror, and literary fiction.

Debutiful recently chatted with all seven winners and is excited to introduce the world to each writer, discover why and how they write, and learn more about the book that won them the award.

Meet Roz Ray, winner of the Crime & Mystery award for her manuscript, Us Honest Crooks. She was born and raised in Seattle and received an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. Ray has spent years teaching writing to K-12 students and at universities and is in the process of becoming a certified Wired for Reading specialist.

We asked Ray to give readers a brief insight into her writing life and her Unpublished Novel Award-winning manuscript, Us Honest Crooks.

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