Great River by Mia Word is the winner of the annual Toi Derricotte + Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize.

Created through a partnership between Cave Canem, The Writer's Room at
the Betsy Hotel, and O, Miami Poetry Festival, the prize honors one outstanding chapbook manuscript per year by a Black poet, regardless of the poet’s publication history or career status.

The manuscript was selected by Brandon D. Johnson

Mia Word is a poet hailing from the Mississippi Delta. Her poetry is often influenced by her Southern upbringing and heritage, rooted in Blues, ancestry and storytelling. She is a recent graduate of Harvard University, where she earned a Bachelors of Arts in English Literature and a minor in Sociology. At Harvard, she received the Edward Eager Memorial Prize for Creative Writing and the David McCord Prize for Depth of Talent in the Literary Arts. She has been a featured poet at the Harvard Art Museum and her work is forthcoming and has appeared in the Yale University Press, Indigo Magazine and The Harvard Gazette.

Publication of this chapbook was made possible through support from the
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami-Dade County, and Schmidt
Family Foundation.