[1] The award includes publication of a book-length poetry manuscript and a cash prize (currently $2,000).
[2] The award was established by the press in 1986 to honor cooperative member author Beatrice Hawley (Making the House Fall Down, 1977)[3] who died in 1985 at forty-one years of age from lung cancer.
The Award was renamed, like its sponsoring publisher, after Alice James "whose extraordinary gift for writing went unrecognized in her lifetime.
[11] Catherine Barnett (Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, 2003) was further recognized with the 2004 Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, a Whiting Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The 2008 winner, Slamming Open the Door, by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, was reviewed by The New York Times Sunday Book Review,[13] and Bonanno was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air by Terri Gross.