Jane Muschenetz Awarded Top 2025 'War Poetry Postcard' Prize

Southern California artist and poet Jane Yevgenia Muschenetz has been named the first-place winner of inaugural War Poetry Postcard Project (WPPP), a literary arts experiment to promote empathy and conversation on the effects of war and violence. It is co-sponsored by Middle West Press LLC and Collateral Journal.

Earlier this year, contest organizers editors called for new and reprint postcard-sized poems that thematically engaged with the effects of armed conflict, state violence, and military service.

Muschenetz’s poem will now be one of three prize-winning works to be published and distributed as visually engaging glossy 4x6 postcards, each suitable for mailing to friends, family, politicians, and others.

EVERYONE who entered the contest will be mailed a set of the finalist postcards! (Additional sets of the 2025 finalist postcards can be ordered via Submittable here at this link.)

All entries will also be considered for inclusion in a potential print and/or e-book chapbook to be published later in 2025.

Muschenetz will receive a $50 cash prize. She and other finalists will also each receive a set of 25 of their respective poems published as postcards, and a trophy “War Poetry Postcard Project” coffee mug!

The winning poem reads, in part:

Every poem is political —

in the sense that everything is political
even sunflowers

this blue sky, stands in opposition
to the air sirens above my birth city [...]

Muschenetz arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She is author of the poetry collections All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay Books) and Power Point (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). The latter employs dark humor, statistics, and visual poetics to interrogate societal inequalities.

The poet writes to the War Poetry Postcard Project:

“My aim is to create poetry that is honest, resonant, and sustaining is rooted in my early life as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. The experience instilled in me not just a firsthand understanding of oppression and division, but also a deep awareness of how art, hope, and beauty allows us to survive impossible odds. From my Soviet childhood, I also inherited a fierce skepticism of ‘facts’ as propaganda—and an abiding reverence for sharing information and ideas from multiple points of view. 

I hope to cross political and cultural boundaries with empathy and insight, centering our common humanity and confronting biases, not to harden defensive opposition or ‘nothing can be done’ attitudes, but to open us to possibilities for change.”

Poets Pamela Hart and D.A. Gray and were also named War Poetry Postcard Project finalists. Each will be profiled in future WPPP blog- and social-media posts, and their respective postcards revealed  later this month.

Finalist D.A. Gray’s winning poem, “A.M. radio,” depicts an emotionally harrowing road trip punctuated by bursts of radio talk-show static.

Gray is the author of the poetry collections Overwatch (Grey Sparrow Press) and Contested Terrain (FutureCycle Press). He earned his Master of Fine Arts at the Sewanee School of Letters. A retired U.S. Army soldier, Gray now teaches and writes in Central Texas.

Finalist Pamela Hart’s winning poem “Mothers Over Nangarhar,” describes a dream-like, liminal time-space that interconnects mothers of all eras and nations.

Hart is writer-in-residence at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, N.Y. The author of the poetry collection Mothers Over Nangarhar (Sarabande Books), she is also a poetry editor for Afghan Voices and the Afghan Women's Writing Project, and assistant non-fiction editor for Consequence Forum.

In addition to the three prize-winners, two poets received honorable mentions.

Poet Laurie Kuntz was mentioned by judges for her poem “Those We Buried, Those We Sent Home,” which illuminates a moment of mutual recognition and remembrance, among veterans and civilians alike. Kuntz is the author of two poetry collections, including The Moon Over My Mother's House (Finishing Line Press).

Poet Juan Manuel Pérez was mentioned by judges for his haiku crown “Fireworks,” which counterpoints spectating a summer baseball game with wartime flashbacks. Pérez, a U.S. Navy and Marine veteran of Operation Desert Storm, has published multiple poetry collections, including Thirty Years Ago: Life And The First Gulf War.

Serving as judges for the inaugural War Poetry Postcard Project contest were three editors of Collateral Journal and Middle West Press LLC:

• Abby E. Murray
• Randy Brown
• Lisa Stice

Established in 2016 by Abby E. Murray, Collateral Journal is a twice-annual on-line journal that features “literary and visual art concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone.” Murray is a former poet-laureate of the City of Tacoma, Washington, and the author of the poetry collections Hail and Farewell (Perugia Press, 2019) and Recovery Commands (Ex Ophidia Press, 2025).

Incorporated as an independent micro-publisher in 2015 by freelance editor and writer Randy “Sherpa” Brown, Middle West Press LLC annually produces from 1 to 4 projects of non-fiction, journalism, fiction, and poetry. Middle West Press’ literary projects often celebrate the people, places, and history of the American Midwest, as well as U.S. military veterans and families. Brown’s credits include a poetry collection, Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire (2015), as well as other work.

Among other professional commitments, Lisa Stice currently serves as the visual arts editor for the twice-yearly literary on-line Collateral Journal, and as an associate editor with Middle West Press. The author of multiple poetry collections—including most recently Letters from Conflict—Stice was also co-editor of the 2023 anthology Things We Carry Still: Poems and Micro-Stories about Military Gear. 

For more information about the War Poetry Postcard Project, including social media links, visit: linktr.ee/warpoets