2020 CAAPP Book Prize

The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics 2020 Book Prize

Winner: Carly Inghram, The Animal Indoors, selected by Terrance Hayes
Carly’s willing manuscript will be published by Autumn House Press in 2021.

"In The Animal Indoors, interior and exterior worlds blend with lyricism like 'the sudden violence of dry earth rising up in rain.' These poems sing as they please of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Frank Ocean, and America’s 'edges flittering in the small light.' Melancholy and joy overlap, clap and slap. The Animal Indoors is full of capacious, capricious edges. This poet straddles worlds."
–Terrance Hayes

Honorable Mention: Mia Willis, mud kitchen

Finalists, in alphabetical order:
M. Saida Agostini, just let the dead in
Wale Ayinla, Sea Blues on Water Meridian
Layla Benitez-James, Casí se besan
Joshua Burton, Waltz
Jason B. Crawford, The Year of the Unicorn Kidz
Jive Poetic, Yesterlock
Lolita Stewart-White, black frag/ments