GOLDEN AX, Rio Cortez’s debut poetry collection, has been longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award in Poetry. The ten longlisted collections were selected by Kwame Dawes, Juan Felipe Herrera, Keetje Kuipers, January Gill O’Neil, and Mai Der Vang from a pool of 260 submissions. Finalists will be announced on October 4, and the winner will be announced on November 16. GOLDEN AX was also the headline title for The New Yorker’s announcement for the award. They write: “Rio Cortez’s 'Black Frasier Crane,' published this summer in The New Yorker, reimagines the famous sitcom character as a Black woman who is unable to shut off 'the mind’s / endless narration.' The poem, a rumination on race and class, appears in the collection GOLDEN AX, along with others that reimagine Cortez’s forebears as 'Afropioneers' who played a role in exploring the American West after Reconstruction. GOLDEN AX, which has been long-listed for this year’s National Book Award in Poetry, is one of several contenders that call on real or imagined ancestors.” Penguin Books published GOLDEN AX on August 30, 2022.