From press release
Sanctuary, Vermont, by Hinesburg poet Laura Budofsky Wisniewski has been named 2022 Foreword INDIES Poetry Book of the Year Bronze Winner in the 25th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. For more information, go to tinyurl.com/SanctuaryVermontAward
Foreword Reviews, a book review journal focusing on independently published books, announced the winners of its INDIES Book of the Year Awards on May 15. The INDIES recognize the best books published in 2022 from independent and university presses, as well as self-published authors. You can view the winners at tinyurl.com/INDIESwinners.
“What a monumental and exciting effort the judging process was this year,” says Matt Sutherland, Foreword’s Executive Editor. “So many worthy titles, so thin the margins between medal winners and finalists.” For this year’s competition, over 2,600 entries were submitted in 55 categories, with Foreword’s editors choosing the finalists. Those titles were then mailed to individual librarians and booksellers charged with picking the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mention winners.
Read more about Sanctuary, Vermont at
orisonbooks.com/product-page/sanctuary-vermont-poems-by-laura-budofsky-wisniewski
Sanctuary, Vermont is also winner of the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize and the 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize.
“Evoking a century-plus of the doings in one rural Vermont town, where every day has at least one marvelous thing,” Wisniewski’s debut builds to a novelistic sense of place and plenitude with shades of Thornton Wilder or Edgar Lee Masters.” —New York Times Book Review
“Here, past, present, and future residents of Sanctuary, a richly imagined Vermont town, are given voice. Laura Budofsky Wisniewski joins the lineage of Edgar Lee Masters, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Louise Glück in inhabiting and valorizing the extraordinary inner lives of everyday people. Sanctuary’s townspeople endure hardships and loneliness, suffer injustice and racism, but still find moments of solace, beauty, and communion.” – Orison Books
About Laura Budofsky Wisniewski:
Laura Budofsky Wisniewski is the author of Sanctuary, Vermont (2022, Orison Books) and How to Prepare Bear (2019, Redbird Chapbooks). Her work has appeared in Poetry International, Narrative Magazine, The Missouri Review, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Image, and other journals.
Laura was a finalist in the 2022 Narrative Poetry Prize, runner up in the 2021 Missouri Review Miller Audio Prize and winner of the 2020 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, the 2019 Poetry International Prize, and the 2014 Passager Poetry Prize.
Laura, who is 71, lives quietly in Hinesburg, Vermont.