Love Letters to My Future Self by Chaun Ballard 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, 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 judge giovanni singleton.

Chaun Ballard’s chapbook, Flight, was the recipient of the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize and was published by Tupelo Press, and his full-length collection, Second Nature, received the 23rd annual A. Poulin, Jr. Prize and was published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2025. His writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Obsidian, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The Atlantic, The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, The New York Times Magazine, and other literary magazines. He holds an MFA and a PhD.