Bennett Nieberg
Transpoetic Broadside Prize
The Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadside Prize awards a single poem written by a trans poet who has yet to publish their first full-length book. The prize consists of $500 and 5 limited edition broadsides of the winning poem that will also be sold via Broke Press to support future Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadside prize years.
Bennett Nieberg (they/them) was a queer Jewish emerging poet pursuing their MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University at the time of their passing in 2021. Their work appears in journals such as Crabfat Magazine, New Delta Review, The Indianapolis Review, Entropy, Permafrost, Western Humanities Review, Pretty Owl, and Lunch Ticket, among others. They were the editor in chief of the journal What Are Birds? which hosted the original Transpoetic Broadside Prize. Gasher Press honors Bennett’s legacy of social justice and commitment to the literary community with the continuation of the Transpoetic Prize.
Photo credit: Rachel Lowe Photography
2026 Year's Final Judge
Jos Charles
author of a Year & other poems and feeld, winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series.
Jos Charles is the author of the poetry collections a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022); feeld, a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series selected by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions, 2018); and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). She is a recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, Princeton, and others. Charles teaches as a part of Randolph College's low-residency M.F.A. program. She resides in Long Beach, California, with her partner and fellow poet, Claire Schwartz, where they run Stray Books.
2026 WINNER
Allen Means
“lachrymatory”
In her final selection, Jos Charles wrote of Allen Means's poem:
"Admittedly, I use the word queer less and less and know even less what it means. There is production, and there is a product, and then there is what gets cast off in favor of the tyranny of value, even with identity. But there is a counterpoint too, which is to say a gap; I sense it in reading ‘lachrymatory,’ to production, even and especially the production of tears. Counterpoint requires the love of the gap between this voice and that, even as it casts off the idiosyncrasies of each voice in favor of the promise of harmony. And, perhaps, I sense that is what may be possible, still, with this obscure little word, ‘queer.’ A promise to love the unsuturable nevertheless: that distance, for instance, between ‘the sea’ and the sea.”
Allen Means is a queer, trans poet from Boulder, CO, currently living in Philadelphia. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where he was a James A. Michener Fellow. He has been supported by the McCormack Writing Center and Creative Philadelphia. His work appears in Salt Hill, Voicemail Poems, ONLY POEMS, and Seventh Wave, among others.
2026 Finalists
“NAN GOLDIN, PICNIC ON THE ESPLANADE, BOSTON, 1973" by Day Heisinger-Nixon
“HIGH FEMME” by b mossotti
“Vestige” by Joshua Zeitler
“During First Contact, I Tell Solaris About Life On Earth” by MJ Dean
“For the day my daughter asks me how she got her name” by Laure Vail
“Scopophilia/Scopophobia” by Emma Goldman-Sherman
“Can Buffalo Bayou Move Instead" by Keagan Wheat
“genuflect” by Alex Cope
“Ouest” by Judy Thorn
“We Sat and resisted” by Aoife Smith
Previous Winners
2025: Rose Jenny for the poem "Burning Haibun for When I Lack the Language to Love Myself" selected by final judge Michael MJ Jones
2023: Callie Jennings for the poem "Four Months to Coming Out Again" Selected by final judge [sarah] Cavar
2022: Leo Gabriel Miller for the poem "buzz cut baptism" Selected by final judge Kayleb Rae Candrilli