2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Results

Here we go: It's time to reveal the results of the 2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge! This year, there were nearly 80 entries from all around the country and the world (including entries from New Zealand, Mozambique, and the United Kingdom), and I enjoyed them all, which does not make it easy to judge.

Per usual, I saw a mix of familiar names as well as new-to-me names. After a couple rounds of reading, I narrowed the list down to 17 collections, which is when it got especially difficult. In this post, I share the winning chapbook and poet, along with three finalists and five honorable mentions.

This year's winning manuscript is The Monsters We Inherit, by Anika Zaman!

I loved the language and stories shared in this 12-poem collection, and it definitely held its theme throughout, which was exciting to read.

Congratulations, Anika!

Here are a few poems from The Monsters We Inherit:

Entrance, by Anika Zaman

The first door was not a door
but a mouth,
someone else's story
swallowing you whole.

You stepped into a name
before you could pronounce it,
a hallway lined with portraits
of women who looked familiar
in ways that hurt.

Every threshold whispered
what you should be,
even the air rehearsed itself
before speaking to you.

You learned early
that some doors led forward
and some led deeper in,
and the difference
is not always visible.

Still, you entered.
Still, the house closed around you
like a lesson.

***

Inheritance, by Anika Zaman

Before I knew the world for fear,
I learned its temperature,
a quick heat rising in the chest
when the room shifted
and my mother's gaze turned sharp.

I learned that silence
was not absence
but strategy.
I learned that women
spoke in edits,
deleting entire thoughts
before they reached the tongue.

Only later did I understand
it was made of all the rules
that lived inside our ribs,
so ancient we mistook them for bones.

Only later
did I name it.

***

Fun, by Anika Zaman

The first monster was funny,
at least that's what everyone said.

It lived under the table
and chewed on the silence
between careful conversation.
It snuck into bedtime stories,
its claws dulled with nostalgia,
its teeth disguised as tradition.

We fed it scraps:
a joke about girls,
a warning about skirts,
a whispered "Don't grow up too fast."

It grew anyway.
It always does.

By the time we realized
it wasn't funny,
it already had a key
to every room.

***

Dream With Locked Doors, by Anika Zaman

The house of my body
grew another hallway.
The lights flickered
in code I couldn't translate.

Every door I opened
led to a room already watching me.
The windows had opinions.
The floors creaked warnings.

Somewhere, behind a wall,
under the ribs, behind the heart,
something moved, slow, deliberate,
as if deciding whether to reveal itself.

I knocked on my own sternum
to see who would answer.
Only breath replied:
thin, borrowed,
as though this house
belonged to someone else.

***

Who Becomes a Monster, by Anika Zaman

Who becomes a monster
is never who you expect.

Sometimes it is the quiet girl
who obeyed too much.

Sometimes it is the woman
who refused to fold.

Sometimes it is the law
that calls itself protection.

And sometimes
the monster is only the shadow
left when they have taken everything else.

***

Love, by Anika Zaman

I saw love as a quiet obedience:
chin down,
hands folded,
neck bared to teeth,
a softness offered before it was asked for.

A family heirloom, they said,
passed from mother to daughter,
like a necklace of small, unspoken rules:
don't take up space,
don't raise your voice,
don't want too much.

But when I opened the box,
I found claws instead,
filed down to keep them gentle,
polished smooth to look like devotion.

I wear them anyway.
Not as jewelry,
as warning, as memory.
As proof that the love I inherited,
was part tenderness,
part survival,
part monster,
shaped to look like care.

And still,
I try to love differently,
to build something softer
from the bones
I was given.

*****

Play with poetic forms!

Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).

Click to continue.

*****

In addition to Anika's winning manuscript, I selected three finalists that gave The Monsters We Inherit a run for its money:

Congratulations to the finalists!

And finally, here's a list (in no particular order) of honorable mentions:

Congratulations to all the honorable mentions! And to everyone who put in the time to write poems in November and assemble and submit collections in December and January. Great job! It was fun to read every entry, many of them more than once.