Here are the winners of the CLMP’s 2025 Firecracker Awards.
The Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) has announced the winners for its eleventh annual Firecracker Awards, which celebrate “the best independently published books of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and the best literary magazines in the categories of debut and general excellence.”
Winners in the books categories will receive $2,000, to be split between the press and the author or translator, and winners in magazine categories will receive $1,000.
Here are the winners, along with the judges’ citations:
FICTION:
Mubanga Kalimamukwento, Obligations to the Wounded
University of Pittsburgh Press
Citation: “Seldom does fiction so expertly capture the complications of queerness, family, dislocation, and culture. Obligations to the Wounded is a triumphant collection of unforgettable tales whose characters are as varied in identity as they are in experienced circumstances. With wit and cunning, the protagonists navigate the ever-present systems of oppression that encircle them and their relationships. Mubanga Kalimamukwento has written a stunning work of compassionate art worthy of our attention and emotions.”
CREATIVE NONFICTION:
Jaydra Johnson, Low: Notes on Art & Trash
Fonograf Editions
Citation: “Jaydra Johnson’s Low is formally inventive, bringing together art criticism and memoir, words and art into a meticulously crafted essay collection. In stunningly lyrical prose, Johnson pays a finely hewn attention to that which our wasteful, capitalistic society discards and collapses the dichotomies of high and low art. Johnson writes with a tenderness towards her subjects, but not without sacrificing a direct, unflinching approach to her insights on class and waste. This book, as the interstitial pieces remind us, give us new rituals for looking, exposing the casually oppressive structures of our society and imbuing trash with a newfound sense of purpose. Fonograf Editions has produced a gorgeous book to match with gorgeously formatted pages, and collaged interstitials that underscore the meaning and message of Johnson’s playful, powerful work.”
POETRY:
Don Mee Choi, Mirror Nation
Wave Books
Citation: “Don Mee Choi’s Mirror Nation is a virtuosic work exploring memory, loss, and grief inside the system of capitalist nation-states. Choi rearranges and expands language(s), numbers, signs, still and archival images in a project so singular that it expands the definition of poetry itself as it charts a poignant journey of meaning-making in the aftermath of empires’ repeated cycles of violence. Mirror Nation offers the best of what poetry can provide—a new way of seeing. Once you have read it, it will live in you and with you for the foreseeable future. Arriving at a crossroads in the American colonial project, this collection is both testament and testimony to the corrosive forces of empire.”
MAGAZINES/BEST DEBUT:
Citation: “Coming to us from Atlanta, Revel dashes out of the gates as an assured, groundbreaking, and dynamic literary magazine. Publishing outstanding work in a range of poetic and prose styles from some of today’s most noteworthy luminaries and promising emerging writers, Revel prioritizes work that is sharp, clear, and urgent. Its elegant design further elevates the pleasure of reading a journal that should have a long and impactful trajectory.”
MAGAZINES/GENERAL EXCELLENCE:
Citation: “Circumference is a thrilling reminder of how the reader is ultimately a citizen of the republic of arts and letters, an enduring place that encompasses the globe and welcomes every person. The representation of different languages in the table of contents alone hints at the beautiful conversation nurtured in its pages, as the journal introduces the hungry reader to compelling voices from an array of cultures and nations that they otherwise may have never known about. In its majestic offerings of poetry and prose, we find perspectives that inspire, challenge, and push the boundaries of what literature can be. At a time when finding commonalities among differences feels more important than ever, Circumference is indispensable.”
