God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode but He Had to Make Sure by Layla Benitz-James is the winner of the third annual Toi Derricotte + Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Created through a partnership between Cave Canem, The Writer's Room at The Betsy Hotel, and O, Miami Poetry Festival, the prize honors one chapbook manuscript a year by a black poet, regardless of the poet's publication history or career status. 

Layla Benitez-James is an artist and translator living in Alicante, Spain, and serves as the Director of Literary Outreach for the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Acentos Review, Anomaly, Guernica, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Her audio essays about translation can be found at Asymptote Journal Podcast. 

manuscript was selected by Major Jackson

Publication of this chapbook was made possible through support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami-Dade County, and Schmidt Family Foundation.