Orison Books

21/05/2025

There's still space in our upcoming class on spiritual poems with our founder/editor, Luke Hankins! Here are some kind participant comments from the previous session:

"I learned a lot from everyone... I have completely and thoroughly enjoyed this class—you are a terrific and thoughtful leader and I loved each and every poem you chose for our packets."

"Yesterday was so amazing. I truly feel blessed by all the words and wonder."

"I am most grateful to have spent time with you this last month and to have explored the wonderful poems you offered us. In this fragmented world it feels extra meaningful to be with kind, sensitive people like you. And I am so happy to have met everyone in this group."

Sign up today at https://bit.ly/4jhvCxW

17/05/2025

Submissions for The Orison Chapbook Prize are open through July 1! Open to all literary genres. The winner will be selected by our founder and editor, Luke Hankins, and will receive $300 and publication.

Find complete details at https://bit.ly/4aDhqdm

09/05/2025

Many thanks to Psaltery & Lyre for this review of M. C. Benner Dixon's THE HEIGHT OF LAND!

"Ethical questions and post-apocalyptic and coming-of-age threads blend seamlessly with Red’s direct theological or philosophical questioning. […] The novel is filled with watershed moments when Red must make choices of conscience, belief, and authenticity—to flow to one side or the other. But even beyond this obvious meaning, the phrase 'height of land' reminds the reader that high indicates elevated. The title, and Red’s search, subtly convey what it means to stand on holy ground. Red himself seems to affirm this in his recognition that '(w)e love a thing, a place, a person—and by loving, we make it holy.'"

https://bit.ly/44PiYSf

06/05/2025

✨Submissions for THE BEST SPIRITUAL LITERATURE AWARDS are open!✨

BEST SPIRITUAL LITERATURE is our annual anthology in which the new, previously unpublished work by the winners of The Best Spiritual Literature Awards is published alongside the finest spiritually-engaged writing that appeared in periodicals the preceding year. The award winners each receive $500. Enter today at https://bit.ly/4d2Hb9r

ABOUT THE JUDGES

Yehoshua November is the author of God's Optimism, a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Two Worlds Exist, a finalist for The National Jewish Book Award and The Paterson Poetry Prize; and The Concealment of Endless Light (Orison Books, 2024). His poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, and on NPR and Poetry Unbound. November teaches writing at Rutgers University and Touro University.

Athena Dixon is the author of the essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files, and her work has appeared in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub, among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.

Halle Hill is the author of the story collection Good Women, which was named a 2023 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, O Magazine, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Southwest Review. A finalist for the 2023 Weatherford Award for Appalachian writing, she is the winner of the 2020 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize and the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize. Her short stories have been translated into French and published in journals including Joyland, Atlanta Magazine, Ursa Short Fiction, and The Oxford American, among others.

24/04/2025

We're pleased to offer a second series of classes on spiritual poems with our founder and editor, Luke Hankins! https://bit.ly/4jhvCxW

Over the five sessions of this discussion-oriented class, participants will delve into the particulars of how a wide range of spiritual poems from diverse traditions and perspectives achieve their impacts on the reader. Luke will offer a generative writing prompt based on each poem, and you'll have the opportunity to share one or two new poems with the group in the final session.

Poets whose work will be discussed include Jane Hirshfield, Gregory Orr, Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Charles Wright, Kwame Dawes, Eduardo C. Corral, Marie-Claire Bancquart, Franz Wright, Ocean Vuong, Tarfia Faizullah, Christian Wiman, David Ebenbach, Philippe Jaccottet, and others.

Luke Hankins is the founder and editor of Orison Books and is the author of several poetry collections, including MAGNITUDE: New & Selected Short Poems (forthcoming, Texas Review Press), as well as a collection of essays and a volume of translations. He is also the editor or co-editor of a number of anthologies, including Orison Books' Best Spiritual Literature series, Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems, and Poems of Devotion. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, EuropeNow, Image, New England Review, Pleiades, Poetry International, 32 Poems, Verse, World Literature Today, and The Writer's Chronicle, as well as on the American Public Media radio program "On Being".

Sign up today at https://bit.ly/4jhvCxW

24/04/2025

Honold’s luminous images and the characters’ interiority, especially Kenny’s imagination, transform the mundane into the otherworldly… In Honold’s skilled hands, the combination of poverty, hardship, and mysticism is evocative and lovely, elevating a youthful road trip to a haunting quest.

—Cary Holladay reviews Our Lady of Good Voyage by Kevin Honold from Orison Books. https://tinyurl.com/3ykh2k3r

10/04/2025

Want to join us in Asheville for public events and generative workshops with award-winning poet Yehoshua November?

We’re welcoming new members to the Dayenu Cohort—open to writers of all backgrounds and experience levels—through May 31.

Come be part of this inspiring creative community!

For more information follow the link in our bio or click here: https://linktr.ee/yetzirahpoets

07/04/2025

Thanks to The Jewish Review of Books for this thoughtful review of Yehoshua November's THE CONCEALMENT OF ENDLESS LIGHT!

"The Concealment of Endless Light sounds like the name of a kabbalistic treatise, esoteric and abstract, and yet the book itself is disarmingly personal. Its poems are warm, accessible, and filled with irony. The 'endless light' is not a distant, luminous ideal, receding from us in the kabbalistic drama of divine contraction. Rather, this light is just around the corner, any corner, behind the everyday phrases and routines, inside the most fleeting and simple memories."
—Jake Marmer, The Jewish Review of Books

In Yehoshua November's latest collection, the mundanity of cleaning out a fridge sits comfortably alongside glimpses of the divine.

04/04/2025

We're accepting submissions for The Orison Chapbook Prize! The winner will be selected by our founder and editor, Luke Hankins, and will receive $300 and publication.

Find complete details at https://bit.ly/4aDhqdm

01/04/2025

📣📣Last day to submit!📣📣
The 2025 Orison Prizes, judged by Tessa Fontaine and Phillip B. Williams, will award $1,500 and publication of the winning book manuscript in each genre. See https://bit.ly/3BjIGl8 for complete guidelines.

Tessa Fontaine is the author of THE ELECTRIC WOMAN: A MEMOIR IN DEATH-DEFYING ACTS, named a New York Times Editors' Choice, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and "best book of the year" by Southern Living, Refinery29, Amazon Editors, and The New York Post. THE RED GROVE, her debut novel, was named a best book by Amazon Editors and People Magazine, and is currently longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her writing can be found in Outside, The New York Times, Glamour, AGNI, The Believer, People, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, and more.

Phillip B. Williams is the author of two poetry collections, THIEF IN THE INTERIOR, winner of The Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and MUTINY, winner of a 2022 American Book Award and a finalist for The PEN/Voelcker Award. His latest book is a novel, OURS, chosen as a "most anticipated book of 2024" by Oprah’s Book Club, Elle, Reader’s Digest, The Rumpus, Kirkus Reviews, The Millions, Lit Hub, and more. Williams is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and The National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at New York University and is founding faculty of the Randolph College low-residency MFA program.

28/03/2025

📣📣Only a few days left to submit!📣📣
The 2025 Orison Prizes, judged by Tessa Fontaine and Phillip B. Williams, will award $1,500 and publication of the winning book manuscript in each genre. See https://bit.ly/3BjIGl8 for complete guidelines.

Tessa Fontaine is the author of THE ELECTRIC WOMAN: A MEMOIR IN DEATH-DEFYING ACTS, named a New York Times Editors' Choice, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and "best book of the year" by Southern Living, Refinery29, Amazon Editors, and The New York Post. THE RED GROVE, her debut novel, was named a best book by Amazon Editors and People Magazine, and is currently longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her writing can be found in Outside, The New York Times, Glamour, AGNI, The Believer, People, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, and more.

Phillip B. Williams is the author of two poetry collections, THIEF IN THE INTERIOR, winner of The Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and MUTINY, winner of a 2022 American Book Award and a finalist for The PEN/Voelcker Award. His latest book is a novel, OURS, chosen as a "most anticipated book of 2024" by Oprah’s Book Club, Elle, Reader’s Digest, The Rumpus, Kirkus Reviews, The Millions, Lit Hub, and more. Williams is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and The National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at New York University and is founding faculty of the Randolph College low-residency MFA program.