Moon City Poetry Award

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.

Past Winners Of The Moon City Poetry Award:

2024: Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé, My Father Paints His Dreams on My Body

2023: Tina Schumann, Boneyard Heresies

2022: Julia Anna Morrison, Long Exposure

2021: Adam Scheffler, Heartworm

2020: Claudia Putnam, The Land of Stone and River

2019: Bret Shepard, Place Where Presence Was

2018: Kathy Goodkin, Crybaby Bridge

2017: Clayton Adam Clark, A Finitude of Skin

2016: Kerri French, Every Room in the Body

2015: Jeannine Hall Gailey, Field Guide to the End of the World

2014: Sarah Freligh, Sad Math

All titles are available through the Store page.