Breakwater Review

Presenting Breakwater Review Issue 40, which features the 2026 Perseroff Prize Poetry Contest’s winning poem “Four Years Later, We Arrive at the Winter We Imagined” by Cady Favazzo, our incredible poetry contest runner-ups, cover art by Michael Moreth, a UMass Boston Student Spotlight by Heather Beckius, and more riveting poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Read it now at our link in bio or at www.breakwaterreview.com.

Announcing Cady Favazzo as our 2026 Peseroff Prize Poetry Contest Winner!

About her winning poem “Four Years Later, We Arrive at the Winter We Imagined”, Guest Judge Jill McDonough wrote: “I’m delighted to award the Peseroff Prize to Cady Favazzo, for their poignant and funny love poem, “Four Years Later, We Arrive at the Winter We Imagined.”  Chock full of images of everyday beauty, “coming snow glowing in the opaque band of sunset behind our house,” this poem gives us “a universe that never tires//of loving back.”  It’s a love poem “to this eternal thing between us,” celebrating even the moment the beloved was “born into this world for me to find.” There is so much charming wonder here, “filed between the work week and my eternal/begging to be touched,” a love poem not just to the beloved, but to love itself, and the way it colors our lives: when we are this happy, “the gas station glows/ through the gauzy curtains all night.”

Read it in Issue 40, dropping soon!

       

Thank you to all our incredible writers who came out to read at Grubstreet for the Breakwater Review reading series. It was a fantastic night! 🎤🌝

Issue 39 highlight from fiction editor Heather Beckius’s interview of our fiction contest guest judge Eileen Pollack. Read the interview and more at the link in bio! ✒️

Issue 39 highlight from our archives, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s story “Neon Guillotine.”

Read the full story and more at the link in bio! ✒️

All are welcome to attend our reading series taking place soon at Grubstreet in the Seaport! Hope to see you there⭐️

Our Perseroff Prize Poetry Contest closes in ONE WEEK. Don’t miss this chance for a $1,000 prize and publication in our spring issue!

Issue 39 highlight from Susanna Baird’s nonfiction piece “The Plus.”

Read the full poem and more at the link in our bio! ✒️

Issue 39 highlight from Elisa Báláu’s nonfiction piece “Lilia.”

Read the full piece and more at the link in our bio! ✒️

Issue 39 highlight from Nick Soluri’s poem “Essay on Neglect.”

Read the full poem and more at the link in our bio! ✒️