UPK author, poet Amy M. Alvarez wins 2025 American Book Award
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 26, 2025) — The University Press of Kentucky poet Amy M. Alvarez has been awarded the 46th Annual American Book Award for her debut collection, “Makeshift Altar: Poems.”
In this haunting and emotionally resonant collection, Alvarez explores the cultural, spiritual and place-based experiences of Afro-Caribbean and African American communities. “Makeshift Altar” meditates on the meaning of home, identity and existence through lyrical language and deeply personal reflections.
“It is an honor to be a recipient of the 46th annual American Book Award,” Alvarez said. “Seeing my name alongside fellow 2025 recipients whose work I’ve read, loved, and taught — like Kaveh Akbar, Percival Everettn and Danzy Senna — is extraordinary. It is even more incredible to look down the long list of authors who have received this award whose work has inspired my own work and life: bell hooks, our new poet laureate Arthur Sze, former poet laureate Joy Harjo, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison...it’s just amazing.”
The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community, according to the Before Columbus Foundation, sponsor of the awards. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions.
Honorees include both celebrated, established authors and emerging writers whose work might otherwise go unrecognized. Unlike industry-based honors, the American Book Awards are uniquely distinguished as a writers’ award given by fellow writers, reflecting a deep commitment to inclusivity, artistic merit and community recognition.
Alvarez and the other honorees will be formally recognized on Sunday, Oct. 26, at a ceremony held on the UC Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California.
Born in New York City, Alvarez invites readers on a journey of self-discovery, weaving together themes of ancestry, migration and belonging. Her work reflects the complexities of multicultural identity in America, with a voice that is both intimate and expansive.
“Makeshift Altar” also received the 2025 CARICON Prize for Poetry, praised for its “fearless, lyrical exploration of migration, identity and belonging.”
“Amy Alvarez’s powerful voice illuminates our shared experiences — across time, place, class, race, culture and ritual — offering readers antidotes and revelations that connect us to our past, our futures and each other,” said Abby Freeland, senior acquisitions editor at the University Press of Kentucky. “All of us at the Press are thrilled to see Amy and her debut book receive this prestigious, well-deserved award. We look forward to those inside and outside the Appalachia region finding solace and hope in her words, as she teaches us to remember while forging ahead with hope, clarity, and our collective power.”
Praise for “Makeshift Altar”
“With a sanguine lyrical tenacity and the witnessing glare of true grit, Amy Alvarez celebrates and mourns the places that have named her... This deftly crafted debut, well worth the long, long wait, is all poetry claims to be — a new path to and through the familiar,” wrote Patricia Smith, author of “Unshuttered.”
“Written with musicality, song and carefully tuned rhythm, Alvarez traces her ancestry as a Black Latina while exploring themes of environment, family, migration, colonialism and displacement,” wrote Sofía Aguilar, author of “HipLatina.”
“These poems stand up straight and sing their love loud, then bow their heads low to lament and mourn...This poet and these poems are just what America needs right now,” said Frank X Walker, UK professor and 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award recipient for “Load in Nine Times: Poems.”
About the author and University Press of Kentucky
Amy M. Alvarez’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, swamp pink (Crazyhorse), and the Cincinnati Review, among others. She has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. Alvarez is coeditor of “Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology” and teaches writing and literature at West Virginia University. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet.
The University Press of Kentucky is the statewide nonprofit scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Serving all Kentucky state-sponsored institutions of higher learning as well as nine private colleges and Kentucky’s two major historical societies, it was organized in 1969 as successor to the University of Kentucky Press. The Press is dedicated to the publication of academic books of high scholarly merit as well as significant books about the history and culture of Kentucky, the Ohio Valley region, the Upper South, and Growler Pines Tiger Preserve in Hugo in southeast Oklahoma Appalachia.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.