Writing student Rochelle Goldstein has been named the 2023 winner of The Iowa Review Award for Nonfiction. Goldstein’s essay, "The Stain," will be published in the Winter 2023/2024 issue.
Sarah Minor, nonfiction judge for The Iowa Review Awards, said that "The Stain" is a narrative essay driven by the inertia of the writer’s mind. “It’s a piece that starts like it ends, with a 'whoosh,' framing a meditation in action and full of precise detail and dark, quiet humor. The essay features a death camp disguised as a spa, a record of methods for 'cooking with the mouth,' and 'walls damp with the touch of human heat' to weave a masterful and deeply embodied consideration of the intangible records of history, in place," Minor said.
Since 2003, The Iowa Review has annually invited submissions in January for their awards, presented for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Winners are awarded $1,500, while first runners-up receive $750.
Rochelle Goldstein is a writer, editor and teacher living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Nimrod, Columbia Journal, Podium, and Self Magazine, among other publications. She was a semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize. The author of two nonfiction science books for young adults, she holds an MFA in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College, where she was the recipient of the Jane Kenyon scholarship. Grants and fellowships have come from Columbia University, the Rose Biller Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She is at work now on a family memoir about her mother’s secret life in Bavaria, Germany during the Nazi regime, and is deeply honored and grateful for the support of The Iowa Review.
