Sera Gamble Wins 2025 Poetry Chapbook Prize

We're pleased to announce the winner of this year's chapbook prize, Sera Gamble, whose collection, Our Lady of the Sick Girls, will be published by Wolfson Press in 2026. It will be Sera's first published collection. Contest judge Nancy Botkin writes, “Sera Gamble's collection is delightful, in part because of its intimate tone. This speaker is talking one-on-one with the reader. Its poems are often litanies, a catalog of the speaker's mind as she navigates the pitfalls of being female in the many inhospitable arenas she encounters in her California life. Her poem 'When I Get There' asserts that for women, 'the world is a knife'. The poems are all at once engaging, heartbreaking, and funny. Very funny.”

photo by Maarten de Boer

Sera Gamble’s poems have appeared in publications such as Painted Bride Quarterly, Harpur Palate, The Los Angeles Review, Sixth Finch, The Silk Road Review, The Pinch Journal, Bodega Magazine, Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, and Sky Island Journal. She is also a prolific screenwriter; most recently, she co-created the television series You and The Magicians. Sera is a first-generation American living in Los Angeles.

We had many strong manuscripts, and I want especially to call attention to our list of ten finalists. These writers are worthy of serious attention.