American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney wins Dylan Thomas prize for ‘blistering’ debut poetry collection

A debut poetry collection with themes including race, addiction and womanhood has won this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.

American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney took home the £20,000 prize – awarded to writers aged 39 or under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age – for her debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name. She was announced as the winner at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas’s birthplace.

The collection, chosen in a unanimous decision by judges, is “an exuberant, blistering collection full of life, humour and ideas. Debevec-McKenney is a ferociously gifted talent,” said Irenosen Okojie, chair of judges. “The book is remarkable in the way it galvanises the reader with a sense of intimacy that is authentic and a voice that feels like an antidote to our tricky times.”

Sasha Debevec-McKenney was born in Connecticut, and now lives in Georgia, where she is a creative writing fellow at Emory University. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and the Yale Review.

Joy Is My Middle Name charts the experience of life in one’s twenties and thirties, dealing with themes of race, sex, womanhood, addiction and consumerism. It is among the first poetry collections to be published by indie press Fitzcarraldo.

In a review for the Guardian, Fiona Sampson described Debevec-McKenney’s collection as “fast and furious”: “These are smash-and-grab raids on a North American life of creative writing programmes and ‘people … at the farmers’ market being very specific / about their mushroom selection’; of cold chicken wings for breakfast and statues to racist presidents.” She called the poems “sexy and exciting … but, as this brainy poet grapples middle-class mores to the ground, they can also be extremely funny”.

Sampson added that the collection fits Fitzcarraldo’s “modernist and experimental house style in ways that feel refreshing for UK poetry”.

In an interview with Literary Hub last year, Debevec-McKenney described her poems as read mostly by “crazy, chaotic girls like me”. “Anyone can read my poems, I hope, but everything I’m revealing about myself in my poems, all the embarrassing stories I’m telling, all the bad stuff I’ve done, I know other girls have felt the same way,” she said. “I’ve been desperate for love and affection. I’ve hated my body. I’ve experienced profound female friendship. I’ve thrown myself at people who don’t want me. I’m happy to admit it all if other girls can relate.”

The other titles shortlisted for this year’s prize were To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong; We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown; Under the Blue by Suzannah V Evans; Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt and Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu.

Joining Okojie on the judging panel were the writers Joe Dunthorne, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Prajwal Parajuly and Eley Williams.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher for her novel The Coin, and previous winners include Caleb Azumah Nelson, Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Fiona McFarlane and Kayo Chingonyi.