Congratulations to SR Contributor Brandel France De Bravo on her upcoming book.
Bravo’s collection of poems, Locomotive Cathedral, was chosen for honorable mention and a $1,000 prize in the Backwaters Press Prize in Poetry contest—an imprint of the University of Nebraska. The collection will be published in early 2025.
Contest judge Hilda Raz, editor of the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series at the University of New Mexico Press, commented on Locomotive Cathedral, “I was delighted by the wit of the speaker, her refusal to be downed by the isolation and grief caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as drug and AIDs deaths she remembers, and cancer.”
“I am thrilled to be joining the Backwaters Press and University of Nebraska family!” said France de Bravo. “Transformation is a recurring theme in Locomotive Cathedral. I’m delighted that these poems, which explore the very human desire for permanence and control in a world of ceaseless flux, spoke to judge Hilda Raz.”
This year, Brandel also had the opportunity to serve as a contemplative coach to a Dalai Lama Fellow.
A second-generation Washingtonian, Brandel has served on the Board of PEN Mexico for three years and serves on the Board of the National Center for Health Research. She is a mentor through the Mexican nonprofit Jovenes Adelante and a certified instructor of Compassion Cultivation Training. A poet, author of numerous nonfiction pieces and essays, and translator, Brandel is the author of Mother, Loose (Accents Publishing) and Provenance (Washington Writers’ Publishing House). Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Barrow Street, Conduit, Diode, and elsewhere.
View Brandel’s poem in issue 29 of Superstition Review. Learn more about Brandel here.
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