Blog Posts by Milkweed Staff

As we near the end of 2023, we find ourselves reflecting and looking forward. We hope you’ll join us in doing the same by reading, sharing, and celebrating a few highlights of 2023—none of which would have been possible without you.

We can’t wait to reach new heights, elevate more transformative voices, and make waves in the cultural conversation in 2024, empowered by your belief in our mission to publish life-changing literature.

In the meantime, read on to find out why Ada Limón, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Debra Magpie Earling, Elizabeth Rush, and our roster of debut authors are among our…

Ibrahim Badshah

We are thrilled to announce that Weijia Pan is the winner of the 2023 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. His manuscript, titled Motherlands, was selected by judge Louise Glück and will be published in September 2024. In addition to publication, Weijia Pan will receive $10,000.

We at Milkweed Editions are deeply saddened by the loss of Louise Glück, a deeply generous and prolific member of the literary community. Glück worked closely with our team to select Motherlands, and with Weijia Pan to develop the manuscript. Her attention and care to this process is emblematic of her brilliance as…

When Priyanka Kumar began writing her debut memoir, Conversations with Birds, she had a profound realization. Since the dawn of the Information Age, modern Americans have struggled to find fulfillment in their lives more than ever before—but to Kumar, the solution to this problem was surprisingly simple, and could be found in a single word. “We’re at a crossroads in the world,” Kumar says. “Our lives have become fragmented in so many ways by all these devices that we’re basically living inside of now. But there’s something in us that’s very human and wants to break open, that remembers…

Robin Wall Kimmerer didn’t set out to change the world—or even to become particularly famous within the canon of environmental literature, which was infamously comprised of homogeneously white voices for decades. Rather, the Indigenous ecologist-turned-author seemed to be operating like a scientist from the outset: her observations led her to understand that the world needed a change, and so she proposed an effective solution. In the face of ongoing biodiversity loss and climate change, Kimmerer observed that scientists had the tools to enact necessary change, but Indigenous communities held the spirit and ancestral knowledge vital to doing so with dignity…

We are thrilled to announce that Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe is the winner of the Academy of American Poets 2023 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. This $25,000 prize recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year.

Codjoe has received a 2023 Whiting Award, a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. She is the 2023 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. Bluest Nude was a finalist for both the NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Poetry…

Milkweed Editions is thrilled to share Ada Limón’s signature project as the nation’s twenty-fourth Poet Laureate, You Are Here, which will feature two complementary initiatives: a new anthology of commissioned nature poems, and poetry installed as public art in seven national parks.

This August, we’re proud to celebrate the one-year reopening anniversary of our brick-and-mortar bookstore, Milkweed Books! Originally established in 2016 at the nation’s largest literary center, Open Book, Milkweed Books is the realization of a long-held dream to deepen our connection to community, and to introduce readers to transformative books and authors that align with our mission and values. Despite closure in 2020, we were thrilled to reinstate our beloved public space in the summer of 2022. We continue to enrich our neighborhood with a vital, newly reimagined community asset that connects people with stories through book sales, exciting…