It’s a celebration
Lucky Jefferson is excited to announce two 2025 Poetry and Prose contest winners!
Our Poetry Winner
Nnamdi Ndiolo is a shortlist for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize (2025). His work is published in New Orleans Review, The Shallow Tales Review, The Kalahari Review, and Konya Shamsrumi. Reach him at @mirrorofbryan(X), @firelord_bryan(Instagram).
Enjoy “Testament” soon.
“This poem deals with matters I think about constantly. I felt a great hunger to see more of the poet’s work on language/body/borders. It imagines and re-imagines the relationship with the so-called “mother-tongue.” I like that the mother/land and mother/tongue here is not kind. The poem explores new territory: the violence of the mother and tongue toward the speaker. It opens a door to explore the mother-tongue as another blade — or the original blade. It balances absolute simplicity with earned complexity in every word. You can read and reread it, and it keeps offering something new.
Most importantly, “Testament” rejoices in the verbal. It enacts, through language, bodies’ desire/s, boldly charting its own unique language of desire. It carries us to “faith’s flesh:/unbraid God from your tongue! Moonlit boys prove sin is love’s synonym.” Then it gives way to its own hunger and fire: “the motherland of jungle justice;” where “Boys who love boys burn.” Through desire, the poem establishes that “the body, too, is a country.”
— Ahmad Almallah‘s remarks on Ndiolo‘s “Testament”
Our Prose Winner
Sofia Bagdade is a poet from New York City. Her work appears in One Art, The Shore, and Roi Fainéant Press, among other publications. More of her work can be found at sofiabagdade.weebly.com or on Instagram @sofiabagdade. She finds joy in smooth ink, orange light, and French Bulldogs.
Enjoy “Lady Luck” soon.
“”Lady Luck” looks at ruin and how memory is always reconstructing from it — through bare words. It reflects on the human inability to stay in the moment by bringing its own moment to us vividly. Every paragraph is its own poem. This is what prose can do when put to the practices of poetry. And to me, if prose isn’t put to that test, it stays on the surface of language’s phenomenon. This piece uses description to create depth and beautiful language at once.
At its center is the line and image of constructing and reconstructing in a stillness that offers us: “Her mind latches to the pockets full of promise, emptied to billiards and blackjack tables.” Word by word, the moment is built and collapses — like thought, and our inability to read thought — our own mind getting in the way, creating an eagerness for the other’s thought. That carries both reader and character to “distant rooms.” These vanishing rooms create nostalgia without falling into cliché. All of it builds to the final line, the final wonder: “why we swallow what sustains us.”
— Ahmad Almallah’s remarks on Bagdade’s “Lady Luck”
Join us in celebrating our finalists:
Spencer Eckart
Ridwan Fasasi
Anastasia Jill
Den Ares
Joshua Walker
Neha Rayamajhi
Ibtisam Shahbaz
Nnamdi Ndiolo
Don Farrell
Marcus
Eithar M.
Marwa Abu Raida
Talicha J.
Ishani Ray
Litzi Yona
Soonest Nathaniel
Rachel Chitofu
Gloria Ogo
Asma Abike
Noreen Ocampo
Renoir Gaither
Nwajesu Ekpenisi
Fiona Hartmann
David M. Alper
Kashawn Taylor
Dr. Anamika Nath
Cole Hersey
Hajer Requiq
Shantell Powell
Mary McColley
Thomas McComb
Sofia Bagdade
Sara Shea
Catherine Jade Grandorff
Brianna Yancey
Karl Iglesias
Madison Ellingsworth
Read the work of our finalists in the 365 Collection beginning January 25, 2026
Our Why
Why are we doing this? We believe writers deserve opportunities like this (and so much more) and one core part of our mission includes being the difference. Many contests charge fees to enter or make writers and artists jump through hoops with no real return. We want to change that.
This Year’s Judge
Ahmad Almallah grew up in Palestine and currently lives in Philadelphia. His newest poetry collection, Wrong Winds, is out with Fonograf Editions (2025). His other collections include Border Wisdom (Winter Editions 2023) and Bitter English (Chicago 2019). He is currently artist in residence in English and Creative Writing at UPenn.