Samuel Cheney (MFA ’19) has been named a Finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series for his debut manuscript, BELIEVERS. The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to recognize and promote excellence in contemporary poetry, and has published books by Joshua Bennett, Jos Charles, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Terrance Hayes, Marie Howe, Tyehimba Jess, Denis Johnson, Larry Levis, Nathaniel Mackey, Adrian Matejka, Ange Mlinko, Matthew Rohrer, Sam Sax, Patricia Smith, Cole Swensen, Kevin Young, and fellow Writing Seminars alum Heid E. Erdrich.

The NPS sponsors the publication of five books of poetry each year, selected by poets of national stature and published by a distinguished group of trade, university, and small presses.

Samuel Cheney is an ex/Mormon poet from Centerville, Utah. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and was the 2021-23 Tickner Writer-in-Residence at Gilman School. His poems are in Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salmagundi, The Southern Review, and other magazines. He has been awarded scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and is currently Academic Program Administrator of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and Assistant Editor of Smartish Pace. Before moving to Baltimore, he worked at Grove Press, Gasser Grunert gallery, and the Criterion Collection. His poem “Deseret Alphabet” was recently chosen by Richard Siken as a finalist for the Arkansas International‘s C.D. Wright Prize for Poetry.

_{photo by McKenzie Ditter}