Congratulations to NER author Tarfia Faizullah, winner of the 2015 Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award in poetry for her new book Seam (Southern Illinois University Press)!

 

According to the GLCA judges:

Tarfia Faizullah’s Seam shimmers with exigent discovery. It looks back with the charge of the absolute present tense and gives voice to what must be named and claimed before the speaker, and the world, can move on. The speaker is a young woman compelled to make a pilgrimage along the seam between “Why call any of it back?” and “yes call it back/back again.” The poems interrogate history via intimate, spiraling, even delicate detail. I admire the way that Faizullah negotiates her authorial vexed position of reporting upon atrocities that both belong and do not belong to her. She recognizes her own position and interrogates it. From start to finish, Seam represents a harrowing act of empathy. As a book and project, this is so powerful, combining modes and formal approaches to explore this little-known part of history. The book is well-crafted and very relevant to our current age.