from River Heron Poetry Prize final judge, John Sibley Williams: “Both confident and uncertain, bold and questioning, calm and desperate, “Losing a Religion” hurts in all the right ways. It’s a tender exploration of human frailty and human attainment through the lenses of family, religion, nature, and art. “I would / gather the world’s suffering and arrange / it into lilacs”. Any poem that attempts this gorgeously impossible feat deserves high praise.”

Janine Certo is author of In the Corner of the Living, first runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Mid-American Review, New Ohio Review, and Nimrod, among others. She is also author of the book Children Writing Poems: Poetic Voices in and out of School (Routledge, 2018). She is associate professor at Michigan State University and lives in East Lansing, Michigan.