The Headlight Review is thrilled to announce the winner of our 2026 Chapbook Prize: Exit Interview by Jacqueline Rosado. Rosado is a Florida girl who believes that all poems are love poems.
Exit Interview is an incisive exploration of abortion, femininity, and familial trauma in a powerful voice and bold poetic experiments. We look forward to publishing this volume soon. Congratulations to Rosado!
“I am absolutely grateful for my debut chapbook, Exit Interview, to be published by the excellent team at The Headlight Review! This is a dream come true, and I had a great heart attack for about ten minutes when I received the news. I also have the deepest gratitude for the contest judge, Alafia Nicole Sessions. I am honored that Exit Interview was selected by a passionate advocate for reproductive justice and autonomy. Stories about abuse and abortion will never go away, but neither will our persistence in living. I am grateful that The Headlight Review and Alafia recognize this sentiment as well.”
Jacqueline Rosado
Jacqueline Rosado is a Florida-grown poet with a background in writing, teaching, and outreach. She received her MFA from Florida Atlantic University, and her work is published in the engine i(dling, FOLIO, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Banyan Review, and The Talon Review. She has previously received the University of North Florida's Amy Wainright Award for poetry, Best of the Net nomination, and she has been a finalist for the Nine Syllables Chapbook Contest, and the Banyan Review Poetry Prize. Jacqueline currently resides in Georgia, where she is a beloved wife to her husband Samuel and loving mother to their dog Emmett. She believes that all poems are love poems. You can follow her and her work on Instagram at @jackierosadoe.
https://www.instagram.com/jackierosadoe/
About the Judge
Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet, writer, and mother living in Atlanta. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in POETRY, Obsidian, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Ecopoetry Anthology, Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, Poetry Daily,and elsewhere. Alafia is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Yaddo, The Watering Hole, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Georgia Writers Association, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. She was selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2023 Furious Flower Prize. Alafia was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and thrice nominated for Best New Poets. She also received the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry. Her debut manuscript, Nine Drops of Turpentine, was selected as a finalist for the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize.
