The Harvard Review Chapbook Prize is awarded biannually for works of between 15,000 and 30,000 words. In 2023, the prize was awarded to Reid Sherline for Rapture, a work of fiction, and was judged by the novelist Lily King.
The 2025 prize is awarded for a work of nonfiction (memoir, longform reportage, travel, etc.) and has been judged by Jerald Walker.
WINNER
Susan Fox Rogers, “Guivi”
A reserved, secretive mother dies and leaves a cache of love letters from a man who was not her husband—a burdensome inheritance that, in the hands of Susan Fox Rogers, a master essayist who also happens to have a few secrets of her own, becomes a spellbinding study in humankind’s complexity. I savored every page, and yet somehow I was still unprepared for the cumulative power those pages would yield. Guivi staggered me. And for that I was grateful. —Jerald Walker
HONORABLE MENTION
Anna Vodicka, “Girl/Thing”
For all the variety in this outstanding essay collection, for all the instances you’ll be moved to contemplation, or to laughter, or to anger, or to tears, one unvarying constant is its breathtaking lyricism. Read Girl/Thing the first time to admire Anna Vodicka’s deft craftwork as she tackles topics such as the suicide of a teenaged classmate, the stigma of being a “townie,” a stalker ex-boyfriend, the power of sibling bonds, high-school shooter-drills, and assorted travails and triumphs of girlhood. And then read it a second time—more slowly—to be re-astounded by the beauty of the prose. —Jerald Walker
FINALISTS
Alan Grostephan, “The Land of the Widow”
Dan Leach, “Married Sex”
Stephen Lyons, “My Mother Remembered”
Andi Myles, “Leaving Evangelicalism”
Our Judge
The judge for the 2025 prize is Jerald Walker, author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and Winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award, as well as two memoirs. His work has appeared in publications such as Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, the Iowa Review, and Mother Jones, and has been widely anthologized, including six times in the Best American Essays series. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, Walker is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emerson College. His latest book, Magically Black and Other Essays, was published in October 2024.
PREVIOUS CHAPBOOKS FROM HARVARD REVIEW
RAPTURE: A NOVELLA (2023)
by Reid Sherline
Described by Judge Lily King as “A marvel of compression” and by the Santa Monica Review as a “very small book” that has made “an outsized contribution to the literature of dark, weird Southern California,” Reid Sherline’s stunning debut publication was the winner of the 2023 Harvard Review Chapbook Prize.
RENGA FOR OBAMA (2017)
by 200+ poets
In early 2017, Harvard Review poetry editor Major Jackson curated the “Renga for Obama” project, a celebration of the Obama presidency featuring over two hundred American poets writing in pairs. The project, which originally appeared at Harvard Review Online, was published two stanzas a day for the first hundred days of the Trump presidency and was highlighted in the Washington Post. It has since been released as a limited edition chapbook with an introduction by Major Jackson and is available for purchase in our online store.
The full text can be read online here.
FUCKING RIGHT (1999)
by A. R. Ammons
An irreverent and humorous collection of poems by A.R. Ammons, one of our foremost environmental poets.
THE PAGANA: CHRISTMAS 1877 (1999)
by Tatiana Averoff
A winter’s tale by Greek author Tatiana Averoff that interweaves superstition and tradition to paint an evocative picture of a young girl’s Christmas.