L to R: Rachel Stempel and Julie Molloy
The third biennial Wallace Award from Foundlings Press goes to the poet Rachel Stempel.
The Wallace Award—a prize we introduced in 2017—honors a chapbook and pairs the winning poet with a guest book artist to create original cover art for the publication. The award is named for Wallace “Wally” Canham, Art Director Darren Canham’s dog and our little band’s beloved mascot, lodestar, and occasional production assistant.
2021 Wallace Award Finalists
Submissions for the 2021 Wallace Award opened in late fall 2020. This year saw the largest-ever batch of entries. From this outstanding field, Foundlings Press recognized the following finalists:
Eric Benick
Shantha Bunyan
Selena Cotte (@selenacotte)
Kristen Steenbeeke (@ksteenbeeke)
Rachel Stempel (@failed captcha)
Rachel Stempel and Interiors
Rachel Stempel, winner of the 2021 Wallace Award from Foundlings Press, is a genderqueer Ukrainian-Jewish poet and educator. They are a staff writer at Up the Staircase Quarterly and EX/POST MAGAZINE and a poetry editor at MAYDAY Magazine. They are the author of the chapbook BEFORE THE DESIRE TO EAT (Finishing Line Press 2022) and their work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Porter House Review, New Delta Review, Penn Review, and elsewhere. They currently live in New York with their rabbit, Diego.
Rachel’s chapbook Interiors will be available for purchase in winter 2021.
Follow: @failedcaptcha
2021 Guest Artist Julie Molloy
Julie Molloy is an illustrator, designer and art director at Block Club, an award-winning branding and strategy agency in Buffalo. Her gallery work debuted in 2014 in her solo show, Inside Voices, a series exploring the relationship between our public faces and private lives. She has since been featured in The Public and elsewhere, displayed her work at events with partners like Peach Mag, and taken on a wide variety of illustration projects, including designing the cover of Matthew Bookin’s chapbook Palace (Ghost City Press, 2018) and many private commissions. Based in Buffalo, she is currently living and working in Mexico City.
View: https://www.juliemolloy.com/
Follow:https://www.instagram.com/juleeclip/
Previous Wallace Award Winners and Guest Artists
2017: Lytton Smith—My Radar Data Knows Its Thing—Order Here
Guest Artist: Stephen Fitzmaurice
2019: Nicholas Molbert—Goodness Gracious—Order Here
Guest Artist: Edreys Wajed