Paige Buffington Wins the 2023 Zócalo Poetry Prize

Home Is the Navajo Nation in ‘From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque’—A Place That Pushes and Pulls Its People

Paige Buffington is the winner of the 12th annual Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize for “From 20 Miles Outside of Gallup, Holbrook, Winslow, Farmington, or Albuquerque.” Her prose poem evokes the light, the seasons, the sounds, the colors, and the push and pull of her home, the Navajo Nation, where Buffington grew up, and where she still lives and teaches elementary school. Though the poem’s story opens in 1962, its narrative is timeless and intergenerational; whether it’s to fight a war or get an education or fall in love, the …