Emerging from the shadows cast by love and desire, E. Hughes’ poetry collection, Another Way to Say Dying, winner of the 2026 CAAPP Book Prize, explores the intersection of Blackness and sapphic love. 

Tracing the contours of intimacy and grief, Hughes’ sophomore collection dwells in the fragile, weighty moments that define our closest relationships. Whether reckoning with a parent’s fractured love or embracing an unfamiliar vulnerability with a partner, Hughes illuminates the tenderness hidden within these charged encounters. The poems balance loss and renewal, grief and love, apprehension and desire, asking what we give to one another—and what ultimately returns to us. At the heart of the collection lies the connection between Blackness and the undercurrents of tenderness, drawing readers into moments of startling emotional clarity and leaving them with unforgettable language: “You touch me where I must surrender to the sharpest weakness within myself.”