Pushcart Prize Nominations 2025

Here we are again, in the thick of awards nomination season, and it’s time for the Pushcart Prize!

I say this with all sincerity, that it’s getting almost impossible to pluck a few titles from the array of spectacular writing we feature every year, and the Pushcarts make it even harder by limiting the nominations to six.

This year I decided to take two pieces from each category—stories, poems, and essays—to emphasize that we’re about all three here at The Disappointed Housewife. That made the selections über-painful, and I have to confess that Dottie and I went back and forth many times before landing on the two nominees from each.

This is just to say that if you had work published here in 2024, you were in the running for a nomination.

Here are the Pushcart honorees that made it through the gauntlet:

STORIES

And Now You Will Need a Very Sharp Knife ~ Catherine Chiarella Domonkos

Starbucks on the Corner of Appian Way and the Forum, 476 A.D. ~ Virginia Nelson

POEMS

It was the time I could and couldn’t (a villanelle) ~ Samantha Moe

Insomnia on a Theme From Brecht ~ Mark J. Mitchell

ESSAYS

Yeah ~ Angela Townsend

Animālium Domesticōrum: A Reverse Chronology ~ Jeanann Verlee

Congratulations to all, and good luck in the selection process!