Citizens for Decent Literature Press is happy to announce the shortlist for the Brian Fugett Memorial Prize. Sincere thanks to all the entrants. The winner of the contest will be announced on November 8, 2025 at the Underground Lit Fest in Toledo, Ohio.
Top 6: Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Westley Heine, Deborah Ketai, Len Kuntz, Zak Mucha, Lisa Nichols
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal is the author of three poetry books, Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press), Peering into the Sun (Poet’s Democracy), and Make the Water Laugh (Rogue Wolf Press). He is the author of eight chapbooks from Kendra Steiner Editions, and the chapbooks, Songs for Oblivion (Alternating Current Press/Propaganda Press), The Book of Absurd Dreams (New Polish Beat), and Befor and Well After Midnight (Deadbeat Press). His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Mad Swirl, Rusty Truck, Unlikely Stories, and Zygote In My Coffee. His e-book,
Everything is Permitted was published by Ten Pages Press.
In a yearbook somewhere in Wisconsin Westley Heine was voted most likely to be on the cover of People Magazine. From highschool he went straight to jail for using his fists rather than his words. Heine learned more behind bars than he did in Art School over the next four years. In college he rented himself out as a dark brooding boyfriend to young women who were turned on by existential angst over American football. When they learned the tortured poet thing wasn’t just an act he was left for dead. He is banned for life from the Los Vegas Strip for destruction of property. He moved to Los Angeles twice and both times he was chewed up and spit out. After the housing market crash in 2008 he lived as a street musician squatting on the Westside of Chicago. He is now the Poet Laureate of drinking forties on Lower Wacker Drive. He has twice featured at the original Poetry Slam at The Green Mill where the crowd would heckle him for not being uplifting so he started his own open mic at The Gallery Cabaret encouraging all styles. Once he slept in Central Park, saw God in Mexico, cursed in New Orleans, married in Austin, and honeymooned in Paris. He now lives in Chicago alone with his demons.
Deborah Ketai (she/her) writes from the intersection of bipolarity, bisexuality, and creative self-doubt, leavened with humor and wordplay. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Think, and many other venues. She and her wife live in Connecticut’s Naugatuck River Valley.
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of six books, most recently, THINGS I CAN’T EVEN TELL MYSELF, out from Ravenna Press. You can find more of his writing at https://lenkuntz.blogspot.com
Zak Mucha, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst and president of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He spent seven years working as the supervisor of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program, providing 24/7 services to persons suffering from severe psychosis, substance abuse issues, and homelessness. Mucha has worked as a counselor and consultant for U.S. combat veterans undergoing training for digital forensic investigations in child pornography and is a board member of the Legislative Drafting Institute for Child Protection.
Before going into the clinical field, Mucha has worked as a freelance journalist, truck driver, furniture mover, construction worker, union organizer, staff member at a juvenile DCFS locked unit, and taught briefly at a women’s prison. He is the author of Emotional Abuse: A Manual for Self-Defense and Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work as well as two collections of poetry.
(Lisa Nichols) I write at the crossroads of grit and wonder, where everyday life collides with the surreal edges of memory, history, and imagination. My work has appeared in the Le Mot Juste anthology, Owl City Press, and across local stages where I share poems as both performer and president of Rochester’s Just Poets. I feel driven to uncover the hidden undercurrents of human experience and to attempt to bring those raw, wriggling truths into the light—sometimes tender, sometimes biting, always unflinchingly honest. I am a teacher and a seeker, drawing inspiration from conversation, wilderness trails, meditation, and the chaos of raising a child in a fractured world. Whether on the page, at the mic, or on the open road atop two wheels, I try to live in presence: reading, laughing, listening, and being just one amongst the many.
