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All histories are a haunting | Poet of the Year Sloan Asakura

Published about 2 months ago • 1 min read

We officially close tomorrow night for our two literary prizes. You can read more details for the Bob Hicok Fellowship here and the Strange Pilgrims Prize here. All entries come with a complimentary paid membership.

$2000 Bob Hicok Fellowship

A yearlong invitation for all poets, everywhere + educational & editorial opportunities

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$3000 Strange Pilgrims Prize

Awarding the Story of the Year & Essay of the Year + partnership with Curtis Brown Literary Agency

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Our 2026 Poet of the Year is...

Sloan Asakura

Sloan Asakura (she/he/they) is a poet and memoirist from Los Angeles. They have received support from organizations like Periplus Collective, McCormack Writing Center, and Blue Mountain Center. They completed their MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University where they won the 2025 Frances Mason Harris Prize and the 2026 Edwin Honig Memorial Award. They are the winner of the 2024 CRAFT Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest. Their work can be found in magazines such as Joyland, BRINK, The Rumpus, and more.

from what I know

there was a child before there was your mother.
there was a child before there was your father.
there was a child before there was that creature living in your mirror.
there was a child before all that bad happened to you.
there is a child still, after.

All Histories Are a Haunting

On inherited grief, memory, & the poem as ritual

A previous partner told me, back then, that grief was like a stone displacing water in a container. And as you go through life, the size of the stone never changes, but the container does. You grow more capable of bearing. The stone takes up less room in the body. This helped me back then, except the problem is that loss is not a one-time feeling. You collect stones. You collect griefs. New names and new faces take their place at the altar.

ON, Canada
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