The Devil's Kitchen Reading Awards are given every year at the Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. The prize was first given in 2005. From 2005-2014, there were two prizes given each year, one in poetry and one in prose. Starting in 2015, there were three categories: poetry, prose fiction, and prose non-fiction. The judges for the award are drawn from the faculty of the MFA program in creative writing at SIU.
Winners receive a monetary prize and are invited to give public readings at the annual festival. In addition to the creative writing faculty, graduate students and editors from the literary journal Crab Orchard Review also participate in the judging process.
Past winners YearPoetryProse2005James RichardsonMary Troy2006Susanna Childress Amanda Filipacchi 2007James Kimbrell Kerry Bakken2008Jennifer PerrineJosh Goldfaden 2009David KirbyDonald Pollock2010Rhett Iseman Trull Jennine Crucet2011Jerry Williams Alyson Hagy2012Katie Chaple Patricia McNair2013Stevie Edwards Mark Brazaitis 2014Steven Schroeder Victoria Redel
YearPoetryFictionNonfiction2015David Tomas Martinez Megan MilksBen Tanzer2016Emily O'Neill Jacob M. AppelMichelle Herman2017Brian FanelliAlexander WeinsteinDonna Kaz2018Nicole Cooley Claudia Cortese Sara Henning Monica BerlinBonnie J. MorrisKayla Rae Whitaker James Allen Hall2019Emily Jungmin YoonLucy Jane BledsoeBill Sullivan
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