Nicole Sealey Wins Inaugural Granum Foundation Prize

Nicole Sealey (Photograph by Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

November 9, 2021 – The first annual Granum Foundation Prize has been awarded to Nicole Sealey for her book-length poem The Ferguson Report: An Erasure. Finalists include poet Okwudili Nebeolisa and short story writer Nicky Gonzalez. Michele Bantz is recognized with a special translation prize.

Born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida, Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University. Her winning project is a book-length erasure based on the Department of Justice’s report detailing bias policing and court practices in Ferguson, Missouri.

“Generally, the intent of redaction is to obfuscate,” Sealey wrote in her application. “The aim of redaction here, however, is to highlight and juxtapose. Unlike background music intended to be an unobtrusive accompaniment, the report as backdrop is meant to be meddlesome.”

Nebeolisa is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he is a Provost Fellow. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Image Journal, Threepenny Review, Strange Horizons, Transition Magazine, and others. He was a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay contest. He is currently working on a poetry collection focused on the idea of the uncanny.

Gonzalez is a writer from Hialeah, Florida. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review, and Taco Bell Quarterly, among others. They are working on a horror novel and a collection of stories set in South Florida.

This year, the Granum Foundation also recognized Michele Bantz with a special Translation Prize. Bantz is working on the English translation of the Portuguese novel O Fogo Será a Tua Casa by Nuno Camarneiro. Bantz is an ATA-certified English translator of Spanish and Portuguese. She is a graduate of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and holds a BA in Hispanic Studies and an MA in Translation. She is a recipient of the American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation (AFTI) Award in Scientific and Technical Translation.

As part of the award, Sealey will receive $5,000. Finalists Nebeolisa and Gonzalez will receive $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. Bantz will receive $500 for the Translation Prize.

Applications for the next round of funding will open in May, 2022.