Alison Thumel is a writer from the Midwest. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Martha Meier Renk Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she completed her MFA. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.
ARCHITECT
University of Arkansas Press, 2024
Winner of the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, selected by Patricia Smith
“Alison Thumel builds and rebuilds her lost brother; she mourns, examines, resurrects and loses him again and again, each time craving to find a body for him that might last. Although the grief in Architect may seem measured—locked in the poet’s tight but surprising approach to lyric—it is a take on grieving that’s wide-aloud, both contained and unleashed, resounding, and unforgettable.” — Patricia Smith
Honors and Awards
Finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award
Semifinalist for the Levis Reading Prize
Longlist for the Julie Suk Award
Selected Publications
Mid-American Review — “Orchard”
The Adroit Journal — “Pope Joan” and “Real”
New England Review — “Artificial Intelligence” and “Lookout”
Indiana Review — “Over Speakerphone”
Washington Square Review — “At the Predator Hunters’ Convention in Rifle, CO”
Sonora Review — “Sestina with Rotisserie Chicken”
Poet Lore — “Above Average Love Poem” and “Love Poem with Salt”
Midwest Review — “Woodworking for Poets”
Ninth Letter — “vocabulary lesson”
Sugar House Review — “Memorial Day”
Southern Indiana Review (forthcoming) — “Photograph” and “Close Reading”
Beloit Poetry Journal (forthcoming) — “Outside Influence”
LIFE OF
Winner of the 2016 Salt Hill Dead Lake Chapbook Contest, selected by Emily Kendal Frey
"Of course we know that grief can't be hurried or shaped, yet we attempt to wrestle our various losses, to tame the blue fists. There's no way around what's lost, but you can erase what you still have. These poems brilliantly make room for this most basic human impulse—to say goodbye—and take us with unflinching grace into the middle of a 'pile of quiet' where questions are formed and not answered, where sadness is made, stubbornly, a stain that won't be removed." — Emily Kendal Frey
