Paul Martinez Pompa Wins The 2025 Moon City Poetry Award

The editors at Moon City Press would like to congratulate Paul Martinez Pompa of Elmurst, Illinois, for winning the 2025 Moon City Poetry Award for his collection Floor, My Floor, My Loyal Lover. Paul will receive the $1,000 cash prize, and his book will be published by MCP in early 2027.

Paul Martinez Pompa lives and works in northeastern Illinois. He is the author of the chapbook Pepper Spray (Momotombo Press). His first full length book, My Kill Adore Him, was selected for the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and published by University of Notre Dame Press. His second book, Domestic Corpse, was an honoree in the Midland Authors Awards and was published by Match Factory Editions. His poetry has been widely anthologized and was commissioned for a Chicago Public Radio project called “In Verse,” which aimed to explore the emotional weight of gun violence. He is a Canto Mundo fellow and currently edits for Packingtown Review.

John Isles and Francine Witte are the runners up in the competition.

We would like to thank everyone who entered this year’s contest, which always prompts so many amazing manuscripts. We wish everyone good luck with their manuscript and with all their writing endeavors.