It is with great excitement that we announce Maurice Moore as the winner of this year’s Amsterdam Open Book Prize for their manuscript, Drawing While Black Mixtape Vol 1.

An evocative hybrid text-art work, Drawing While Black Mixtape Vol 1 was chosen by contest judge Raina León. León remarks, “In Drawing While Black, we are invited into a distinctive lexicon of black, queer resistance in visual art and poetry. Ink on paper as technique inserts a full celebration of blackness against the field of white. The poems, fierce and fearless, intermingle pop culture with philosophy with body positivity with revelatory moments of invitation into the artistic process in shaping meaning and the world.” Publication of the winning manuscript is slated for 2023.

Poet Kristen Case has been selected as runner-up for her engaging and contemplative collection Daphne, which León posits “is emotionally tender and pulsing with a scholarly attention to form, mythology, and revelation, as attentive to the small cicada as it is to the interconnectedness of violence all around and within us.”

Drawing While Black Mixtape Vol 1 will be Versal Editions’ second title. After the summer, the team at Versal will begin work with Maurice to publish their collection in early 2023. We are also looking closely at how to support Amsterdam’s literary community and its gathering spaces – like VERSO / – in ways that are abundant, trustworthy, health-mindful, and inspiring.

We want to thank everyone who chanced their work with us. We also want to thank our reading team and Raina for their invaluable insights, support, and selections.

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