Announcing the Deep Line Poetry Series 2026 Finalists

Hub City Press is pleased to announce the six finalists for the 2026 Deep Line Poetry Series, created to spotlight poetry by writers working in the American South, writing about and from BIPOC communities. One winning poetry will receive an advance of $3000 and publication by Hub City Press in 2027. This series is made possible with funding from the Poetry Foundation.

The winning manuscript will be selected this year by editor-at-large Jennifer Chang. Poet and scholar Jennifer Chang was born in New Jersey. She earned her MFA and PhD from the University of Virginia and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of An Authentic Life (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008), and Some Say the Lark (Alice James Books, 2017).

The six finalists for this year are Delicia Daniels, banah el ghadbanah, April Lim, Rodrick Minor, Noreen Ocampo, and Bianca Alyssa Perez.

Delicia Daniels is a poet, activist, and person who stutters. Her first publication, The Language We Cry In, was selected as the Discovery Prize winner for the 2017 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards. Her second poetry collection, Abolition Chronicles, was selected as a finalist for the 2023 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics Book Prize, The Poetic Justice Institute Prize (2023), and the 2025 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize. Derrick Austin selected Abolition Chronicles as his Runner up choice for the 2025 New Southern Voices Poetry Book Prize.

banah el ghadbanah is the author of La Syrena, Visions of a Syrian Mermaid from Space, which won the Diverse Voices Prize from Dzanc Books; the Independent Book Review named La Syrena one of the best books of 2023. banah is also the author of Ululating from the Underground: Syrian Women’s Protests under Siege, forthcoming from SUNY Press, a culmination of fourteen years of research. they hold a PhD in Ethnic Studies. they are published in over forty journals and magazines including Mizna, the Women's Review of Books, Herizons, Third World Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and more. They were the finalist of the Cream City Summer Fiction Prize, a finalist for the Feminist Wire Poetry Competition, a finalist for the Ralph Henry Gabriel  Prize from the American Studies Association, and the winner of the Hamsa Dream Deferred Essay Contest for Civil Rights in the Middle East. 

April Lim will always be the daughter of survivors of the Cambodian Genocide. She is a Teochew-Cambodian American writer from Houston, TX, currently residing in Dallas. She has received fellowships and scholarships from Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, The Watering Hole, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared in Honey Literary, Sweet: A Literary Confection, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Poetry. She was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Cambodia. You can find her at aprillim.com.

Rodrick Minor is a visual artist, poet, and Black foodways advocate from Mississippi and Louisiana. He’s a four-time member of the Baton Rouge National Poetry Slam Team, the 2015 Baton Rouge Grand Slam Champion, and a member of the 2016 Philadelphia National Poetry Slam Team. Their poetry explores the study of Afro-gastronomy, how food is central to identity, traditions, intimacy, spirituality and culture overall. His work has appeared in Voicemail Poems, The American Poetry Review, Knights Library Magazine, Micro Podcast, Duende, Poemhood: Our Black Revival: History, Folklore and The Black Experience: A Young Adult Poetry Anthology (Harper Collins, 2024), Callaloo, Nashville Review, Bellingham Review, and other forthcoming presses and journals. He is a Best of Net nominee, Cave Canem Fellow, Tin House Fellow, Watering Hole Fellow, Winter Tangerine Alumnus, Hurston-Wright Fellow, BOAAT Press Fellow, 2025 Cato Fellowship Prize Finalist, and 2025 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Poetry Prize Finalist. He earned an M.F.A. in poetry at Randolph College, where he was awarded the Nancy Craig Blackburn ’71 Fellowship. He is currently an editor for Voicemail Poems.

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. She is the author of two chapbooks, including There Are No Filipinos in Mississippi (Porkbelly Press, 2025) and Not Flowers, which won the 2021 Variant Literature Microchap Contest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Southeast Review, The Margins, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere, and she is grateful to have received support from the McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House Workshop), Longleaf Writers Conference, and University of Mississippi, where she earned her MFA in 2025.  

Bianca Alyssa Pérez (she/her/ella) is a poet & educator born and raised in Texas. Her chapbook, Gemini Gospel, was the winner of Host Publication's Chapbook Contest in Spring 2023. Find more chisme & writing at her website: biancaalyssaperez.com.