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Pumpkin, Spice, and Papercuts
Pumpkin Spice and Paper Cuts felt like wandering through an autumn forest where every leaf held a story, cozy though tinged with bittersweet memory. Each entry releases sparks of imagination that lingered long after reading. The range was delightful. Verses glowed with warmth, tales carried an edge, and essays held both tenderness and truth. Judging was no simple task, for every piece carried its own seasonal magic. To those who placed, congratulations on shining through this golden harvest of words. And to all who contributed, thank you for making this anthology a gathering place of voices worth savoring, again and again.
With warmth and gratitude,
Prarthana Binish
The Goddess of Pumpkin Spice has been announced
We are delighted to unveil the winners and finalists of Pumpkin Spice & Paper Cuts. This anthology overflowed with autumn warmth and wistful grace . Poems steeped in nostalgia, heartbreak, and the quiet magic of change. Some poems burned with tender gold, others bled with quiet ache, yet all were bound by the restless pulse of truth and creation.Congratulations to all our winners and finalists! Your words have turned the chill of fall into something luminous. May you continue to write, to feel deeply, and to set the page alight with the color of your soul.
Winner
Priscilla Duran-Luciano - SEASONS
Priscilla Duran-Luciano is a Dominican-born poet and cardiovascular epidemiology researcher based in New York City. Her poetry blends visceral imagery with themes of identity, resilience, grief, and transformation. Outside of writing, she studies the rhythms of the heart, both in science and in the quiet moments of everyday life.
Runner Up
Debra Watson - A WHISPERED LIFE IN THE HUSH OF LEAVES
Debra is a retired educational Administrator and a volunteer grant writer. Her creative pursuits include writing poetry and screenplays, and she enjoys spending time with her beloved family, great literature, art shows, theater, and time with loved ones.
2nd Runner Up
Meg Taylor- DELIGHTS, BUT NOT OF FALL
Meg Taylor is a poet whose work explores transformation, strange intersections of the personal and the corporate. After years in a male-dominated industry navigating burnout and reinvention, she began writing as a way to unravel what lingers beneath daily life: the voices of ghosts, the weight of work, and the slippery line between reality and the surreal. Her poems often inhabit unreliable narrators and fractured worlds where language itself begins to bend. Meg’s work has appeared in publications including WILDsound and Wingless Dreamer, and she continues to seek spaces that embrace irreverence, mystery, and vulnerability. She believes poems should feel like chin-grabs—demanding attention, refusing to look away. When she’s not writing, Meg is likely overanalyzing song lyrics, noticing the small strangenesses of everyday life, or coaxing humor from the heaviest truths.
Finalists
These five poets stirred the season with verses steeped in nostalgia and longing. Each voice carried its own fragrance. They really expressed rain-soaked pages, fading light, and quiet courage. Together, they turned this year’s Pumpkin Spice & Paper Cuts into a harvest of hearts, where every line tasted of autumn and ache.
1. HOW THE RAIN WATER GATHERS ON A PHESANT LANE - KAITLIN NEAL
2. CITY BOUND - GAVIN BOURKE
3. AUTUMN PASSES -HOWARD OSBORNE
4. AUGUR’S ROD OF ASH - TERRY BRINKMAN
5. LEAVES THAT NEVER TRULY LEAVE- ALEX ANDY PHUONG
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