The Word Works is elated to announce the 2026 selections for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection, chosen by this year’s judge, Adam Clay. They are Long Line by Monika Cassel and Notes on Water by Peter Grandbois. Many thanks to all who submitted a manuscript and to Adam Clay for his careful reading.
The HTCC features full-length collections from poets who volunteer to assist a literary organization or project. Any literary nonprofit operating in America or Canada may nominate their volunteers to submit a poetry manuscript to the HTCC, an invitation-only judging process. The selected poets receive a $500 stipend and publication in the following year.
Monika Cassel is the translator of Daniela Danz’s Portolan (Georgia Review Books, 2026). Her poems and translations have recently appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, The Common Online, The Georgia Review, Poetry, and Poetry Daily. She lives in Portland, OR and is an assistant poetry editor for Four Way Review. Long Line is her debut collection.
Adam Clay writes that Long Line “pushes against the impossible currents of daily life to reflect on a troubling family history and to do with this reality. In these poems, art becomes a way of stitching a fragmented family legacy into an attempt to understand where we come from, who we are, and where we are going. ‘I know the house they built held hurts I cannot heal,’ Cassel writes, but these poems still manage to be a powerful acknowledgment of those hurts. This amazing book reckons with the past in the way that only poetry can. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after my first read, and I’ll continue thinking about it for years to come.”
Peter Grandbois is the author of sixteen books, including, most recently, the poetry collection Story of a Pilgrim (Tiger Bark Press, 2026). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in nearly two-hundred magazines. He is poetry editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.
Clay observes: “Peter Grandbois’ Notes on Water effortlessly bridges the gap between the wide expanse the natural world and the hushed moments of domestic life. These poems lift our heads up from the screens that take up so much of the day, telling us to pause, to look at the river, and to see ‘how the waves shatter / into light.’ In the opening poem, Grandbois asks us to consider ‘water’s / Mad silence, how it carries every single / Person [we’ve] ever known.’ This is a powerful and moving collection, one that continually unfolds on each reading. It captures the universality of human experience, the ‘lullaby to which [we] belong.’”
CONGRATULATIONS ALSO TO OUR FINALISTS!
Dear Sanctuary, Karen Llagas – CA
I and I and, Kathryn Johnson – OR
When Mr. Bridges Died , Mark Kraushaar – WI
To the Gods of Perfect Sugar, Tara Mesalik MacMahon – WA
Woman, Counting, Marcela Sulak – TX
By Morning, Michael Qauttrone – NY
ODE, Irene Cooper – OR
Why I Am Not Your Boyfriend, Katana Smith – IL
The Binghamton Cantos, Dante di Stefano – NY
Road Notes, M. Travieso Williams – NY