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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 1, 2026 Media Contact: Caroline Bock/wwphpress@gmail.com
WASHINGTON WRITERS’ PUBLISHING HOUSE ANNOUNCES
PUBLICATION OF NEW AUTHOR JASON GEBHARDT
The Washington Writers’ Publishing House (WWPH) is proud to announce the upcoming release of Dictionary of Air by 50th Anniversary Editor’s Prize winner Jason Gebhardt. The publication date for this debut collection is January 26, 2027.
Jason Gebhardt’s Dictionary of Air explores family, memory, and history with precision. From domestic quiet to historical echoes, each poem reveals how ordinary moments—washing dishes, watching a child, remembering the dead—become luminous. With tenderness and humor, Gebhardt reminds us that love and attention are forms of work, and language is our home.
A short sample is here:
Nectarine
It’s good to not know what you’re doing,
a reminder you’re just visiting from somewhere.
When my 3-year-old says he’s nectarine-ing
the oak, don’t ask how nectarines figure in.
Let him delight in picking the perfect twig.
Follow as he rounds the trunk tapping its bark.
You’re visiting from somewhere you can’t describe,
why rush to the next place, then the next?
Stop and let the tree need this from him
like the bloom needs the bee’s casual brush.
Good to know the fruit, but not the tree.
Let nectarine pass through the dictionary of air.
— “Nectarine” from Dictionary of Air
Praise for Dictionary of Air:
“From the opening lines of Jason Gebhardt’s brilliant Dictionary of Air— “Now the light is on”—we get the impression that the speaker is a seeker, a mystic, floating in a world of “wind knocking the window/quiet with the emptiness of clocks.” What’s fascinating about Dictionary of Air is the way it dreams itself a family, a nation, a universe in which the rules we all live by are seen to be as strange and uncanny as they really always are, all the while connecting the speaker’s lineage to the life of his G-man grandfather, and the lives of his children, and to Dickinson’s life, her poetry, he says, like a sparrow freed from a downspout: “wherever I am, I hear it. Gebhardt’s formal mastery in his prose poems and his concrete poems, state-shaped, and his delicate lyrics, like the final poem, “Poem,” are to me extraordinary contributions to the art. A poet of the highest caliber, Jason Gebhardt has written a truly remarkable debut.”— David Keplinger, author of Ice, winner of the Rome Prize
‘…green doesn’t exist without first blue/ and yellow. I too have empathy for the language/ I speak.’ Jason Gebhardt gives us his formula for poetry; for a good poem cannot exist without first image and feeling. Then language speaks with empathy. We could add “situation” for Gebhardt’s poems are stories where we recognize our own tenderness, and so we naturally want more. Dictionary of Air also presents delightful poems in the actual shape of the states they present. Here we know, over and again, how “the poet” is playful and teaches joy. Who else could we possibly go to? –Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate
“Jason Gebhardt’s Dictionary of Air is a book about paying attention, about the seemingly unremarkable moments and places that our minds return to again and again. The domesticated goldfish swimming in its bowl, the stranger blurred in the background of a family photo, the flyover states, the rooms we have forgotten in the backdrop of our lives, the child we lost to a failed pregnancy, who makes more precious the one who was born. This is a book of the small writ large, the accidental moments that shape our lives.” – Holly Karapetkova, Vice President, Poetry at WWPH, and award-winning author of Dear Empire (Gunpowder Press) and Words We Might One Day Say (Washington Writers’ Publishing House).
About the Author
Jason Gebhardt’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, Poet Lore, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Tar River Poetry. His chapbook Good Housekeeping won the 2016 Cathy Smith Bowers Prize, and he is the recipient of multiple Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and three children and works as a preschool teacher.
About Washington Writers’ Publishing House
The Washington Writers’ Publishing House, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, will publish a record four authors in January 2027, Gebhardt included, all winners of the 2025 manuscript contests held by the press. The WWPH manuscript contest will reopen on April 1-June 30 2026 for their annual round of manuscript submissions. As the longest continuously operating cooperative nonprofit (501 (c) (3)) literary press in the United States, the Washington Writers’ Publishing House is committed to publishing and celebrating the rich diversity of voices within its regional footprint, which includes DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Its bi-weekly online journal, WWPH Writes, now a paying market, is open for submissions, and interested writers and readers are encouraged to subscribe to this free lit journal.
More information about this upcoming collection and the Washington Writers’ Publishing House can be found at www.washingtonwriters.org