Poetry: J Brooke, Nicole Santalucia, Philip Schultz, and R.A. Villanueva

Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.

J Brooke’s full-length poetry book, I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side, won the Editor’s Choice Prize at Driftwood Press and was a Finalist for Ashland Press’s 2025 Richard Snyder Poetry Prize. Brooke received two Pushcart nominations, a 2025 Best of The Net nomination, and was a Finalist for the 2025 Iowa Review Nonfiction Prize. Their autobiographical essay “HYBRID” won Columbia Journal’s 2020 Special Issue Nonfiction Award. Their work appears in Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Harvard Review and elsewhere. Brooke is the Prose Book Reviews Editor at The Rumpus, Poetry Editor at Trans Poetics Archive, and former Nonfiction Editor at Stonecoast Review.

Nicole Santalucia is the author of Lesbian Dinosaurs / Dinosaur Lesbians (Bordighera Press, 2026), The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books, 2020), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press, 2018), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press, 2014). She’s a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Prize and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. Her work has recently appeared in Indiana Review, Poetry Daily, Los Angeles Review, and Voices in Italian Americana. She’s a Professor of English, the Director of First-Year Writing, and co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Santalucia has led poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, public libraries, Boys & Girls Clubs, nursing homes, YWCAs, LGBT centers, and she founded The Binghamton Poetry Project in upstate NY. She received her M.F.A. from The New School and her Ph.D. from Binghamton University. She’s currently working toward a master’s in social work.

Philip Schultz is the author of nine poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Failure. The founder and director of The Writers Studio, he’s won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Levinson and Lamont prizes, and is co-editor of The Pushcart Book of 21st Century Poetry and Prose.

R.A. Villanueva is the author of two award-winning collections of poetry: A Holy Dread (Alice James Books, 2026), and Reliquaria (U. of Nebraska Press, 2014). New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes, and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn.