The Village of New Ghosts

The Village of New Ghosts is attuned to the destabilizing experience of loss. Time, and the poet’s sense of it, has shifted, and she is newly awake.

Winifred Hughes is winner of Passager’s 2024 Henry Morgenthau III First Book Poetry Prize for a poet 70 or older, the only prize of its kind in the United States. With this national prize, established in 2018, Passager continues its mission of bringing the compelling writing and insight of older generations to the public.

Hughes writes that now in her 70s, she is faced with ＂the confrontation of unimaginable loss. But there is also a sense of being an experienced writer, which comes with a freedom from youthful ambition or trying to build a career.＂

Grace Cavalieri, contest judge and former Maryland Poet Laureate, said, ＂Poetics that bring emotional worlds into existence have to be held in place with mastery. Someone is obviously in charge of this work. Someone is in control of its precise syntax and beautiful heart. I never wanted to stop reading.＂