2814 5TH STREET, NE +WASHINGTON, DC 20017+www.washingtonwriters.org
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 1, 2026 Media Contact: Caroline Bock/wwphpress@gmail.com
WASHINGTON WRITERS’ PUBLISHING HOUSE ANNOUNCES
PUBLICATION OF NOTIFICATIONS ON by EMILY HOLLAND
Winner of the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize
The Washington Writers’ Publishing House (WWPH) is proud to announce the upcoming release of Notifications On by 2025 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize winner Emily Holland. The publication date is January 26, 2027.
Emily Holland’s urgent debut collection, Notifications On, interrogates fluctuations of lesbian desire across physical and digital landscapes. Against the backdrop of climate collapse, these places and platforms become sites of wanting, embodying locations where the speaker attempts to make their yearning—and their queerness—legible. Social media bots, rural convenience stores, internet memes, sites of remembrance, and online chat rooms all become spaces that refract the speaker’s sense of self and interrupt the flow of their desire. In turns that resist forward narrative movement, Notifications On revisits moments of anxiety, pleasure, pain, and love; through them all, the speaker tells us exactly what they are “afraid to put into words.”
Here is a short sample from the award-winning collection, Notifications On:
from “DESIRE LINES”
To say it all without utterance: flowers, a cooked meal, a ride home. Here, take
this from me. I wonder when it will all be enough. How many ways can I try. Nice
is a word we use when we don’t know what else to say. Will I always be nice.
Praise for Notifications On
“[A] wonderfully textured, imminently heartfelt, and deftly crafted debut. Each poem reminds us how to allow intimacy into our everyday, booked-and-busy lives.” — Steven Leyva, author of The Opposite of Cruelty (Blair Publishing) and The Understudy’s Handbook (Washington Writers’ Publishing House)
“[…] Notifications On by Emily Holland is one hell of a debut: sexy, unflinching, witty, & intimate. The poems in this collection ask not only what & who do we want, but how can we possibly disentangle our desires from those of others? & how can we then communicate those wants, outside of language, beyond the body, & in moments of intrusion? If queer yearning & regret were a book, it would be called Notifications On.” — Mac Crane, author of A Sharp Endless Need (The Dial Press).
“Notifications On paints portraits, landscapes, and still-life’s that leave you reflecting. In intimate moments and interruptions, Holland asks: in an era full of ASMR, notifications, and ideals about love, what is it that we truly desire? Yes, we want poetry, but make it for the dykes, because at the end of the world, I’d trust the real yearners to be the ones left standing.” — Chanlee Luu, 2024 Jean Feldman Poetry Award Winner, author of The Machine Autocorrects Code to I (Washington Writers’ Publishing House).
About the Author
Emily Holland (they/she) is a genderqueer lesbian writer living in Baltimore. Their work appears in publications including HAD, Shenandoah, DIALOGIST, Little Patuxent Review, and Black Warrior Review. She is the author of the chapbook Lineage (Dancing Girl Press, 2019) and the recipient of multiple fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2023, they served as the Chair of Outwrite, DC’s LGBTQIA+ literary festival. She currently teaches creative writing at the George Washington University and serves as the Executive Editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal, and the Communications Manager at The Writer’s Center. More information about Emily Holland can be found here.
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, Holland included, all winners of the 2025 manuscript contests held by the press. They will reopen on April 1–June 30, 2026, for their annual round of manuscript submissions. As the longest continuously operating cooperative (all volunteer) 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 these poets and the Washington Writers’ Publishing House can be found at www.washingtonwriters.org
###