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, The Adroit Journal, 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
Selected Publications
The Adroit Journal — “Pope Joan” and “Real”
Midwest Review — “Woodworking for Poets”
Ninth Letter — “vocabulary lesson”
Sugar House Review — “Memorial Day”
Washington Square Review — “At the Predator Hunters’ Convention in Rifle, CO”
New England Review — “Artificial Intelligence” and “Lookout”
Indiana Review — “Over Speakerphone”
Sonora Review — “Sestina with Rotisserie Chicken”
Poet Lore — “Above Average Love Poem” and “Love Poem with Salt”
Ploughshares (forthcoming) — “Dart”
Mid-American (forthcoming) — “Orchard”
LIFE OF
Winner of the 2016 Salt Hill Dead Lake Chapbook Competition
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
