The Barnard Women Poets Prize is given every other year for an
exceptional second collection of poems written by an American
woman who has already published one book of poetry (in an
edition of 500 copies or more). The winner will receive an
honorarium of $1,500 and publication of her manuscript by W.W.
Norton & Co.
The next prize will be awarded in the spring of 2009. Submissions
for the 2009 Prize will be accepted in the summer and early fall of
2008. A qualified applicant should submit three copies of her
book-length manuscript with a cover letter naming the title and
publisher of her first collection. Although a writer may submit a
manuscript that has been entered in other contests, any manuscript
under option to another publisher is not eligible. (Please note
that any entries that are encumbered will be disqualified.)
Page-limit is not specified. Because the prize is given to a poet
who has already published a first book, the manuscripts are not read
anonymously. Every qualified manuscript will be read with care by
the panel of judges and the chief judge, who changes every year.
The entry fee is $20, payable in check to Women
Poets at Barnard. Submissions will be accepted between August 1,
2008 and October 15, 2008. (Please note that submissions received
before August 1, 2008, will not be accepted.) Winners will be
contacted directly in the spring of 2009.
Please send manuscripts and fees to Women Poets at Barnard,
Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. Email questions
to Saskia Hamilton at
shamilton@barnard.edu.
Thank you for your interest in the Barnard Women Poets Prize.
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Winner, 2007 Barnard
Women Poets Prize
The 2006 Barnard Women Poets Prize was awarded
to Lisa Williams for Woman Reading to the Sea, chosen by Joyce
Carol Oates.
In poems of “arresting intelligence, precision, and beauty”
(Joyce Carol Oates), Lisa Williams takes on the subjects of
beauty, language, nature, mortality, and myth in Woman Reading
to the Sea. Insistently musical, her second collection displays
a wide variety of rhythms and forms, as well as an
improvisational delight in the sounds of language. “Lisa
Williams takes us into eerily imagined worlds,” Oates writes,
“the interior of a jellyfish, and the interior of a glacier; she
beguiles us with the most seductive of poetic possibilities—that
we might be absorbed into the consciousness of the beautiful and
inarticulate world of nature.”
Lisa Williams is also the author of The Hammered Dulcimer, and
was the recipient of the Rome Prize in 2004. She teaches at
Centre College and lives in Danville, Kentucky.
Woman Reading to the Sea will be published in 2008 by W.W.
Norton & Co. Hong will read from the book as part of the 2008
Women Poets at Barnard series upon publication.
Winner,
2006 Barnard Women Poets Prize
The 2006 Barnard Women Poets Prize was
awarded to Cathy Park Hong for Dance Dance Revolution
, chosen by Adrienne Rich.
Rich praised "the
mixture of imagination, , language and historical consciousness” in the book.
“Hong's work is passionate, artful, worldly. It makes a reader feel and think
simultaneously, and rather then implying a nihilistic or negative vision of
the future, it leaves this reader, at least, revitalized.”
Cathy Park Hong won a Van Lier Fellowship
and a Pushcart Prize for her first book, Translating Mo'um. She is also the
recipient of a Fullbright Fellowship (South Korea), a National Endowment for
the Arts Fellowship in poetry, and the Village Voice Mary Wright Fellowship
for Minority Reporters. She works as a freelance journalist and teaches at
the New School in New York City.
Dance Dance Revolution will be published
in 2007 by W.W. Norton & Co. Hong will read from the book as part of the
2007 Women Poets at Barnard series upon publication
Winner,
2005 Barnard Women Poets Prize
The
2005 Barnard Women Poets Prize was awarded to Julie Sheehan for Orient Point
Sheehan's
first book, Thaw , won the 2000 Poets Out Loud Prize. Her
poems have appeared in Parnassus, Paris Review, Raritan,
Salmagundi, Ploughshares, Rattapallax, Southwest Review,
Kenyon Review and Yale Review, among many others. In 2003, Paris
Review awarded her the Conners Prize for "Brown-Headed
Cowbirds."
Poet
Laureate Billy Collins recently chose "Hate Poem" for
the forthcoming collection of poetry by Random House (2005),
titled 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day . Sheehan lives
in Springs, Long Island.
Orient Point , will be published in 2006. Sheehan will also give a
public reading of her work as part of the distinguished
Women Poets at Barnard series in 2006 to coincide with the
publication of her book.
read the entire press release .
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Winner,
2004 Barnard Women Poets Prize
The 2004
Barnard Women Poets Prize was awarded to Tessa Rumsey for The
Return Message.
Rumsey's first
book, Assembling the Shepherd , won the 1998
Contemporary Poetry Series Competition and was published
the University of Georgia Press in 1999.Rumsey's poems
have recently appeared in Conjunctions, The Boston
Review, The Washington Post, and Verse.
Rumsey
received her B.A. in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence
College, an M.F.A in creative writing from the Iowa
Writers' Workshop, and an M.A. in Visual Criticism from
the California College of the Arts. She lives in San
Francisco.
As
part of the distinguished Women Poets at Barnard series,
Rumsey will give a
public reading of her work to coincide with the
publication of her book, The Return Message ,
which will be published by W.W. Norton in April 2005.
read the entire
press release .
Winner,
2003 Barnard Women Poets Prize
The
2003 Barnard Women Poets Prize was awarded to
Rebecca Wolff for her second book, Figment.
Wolff’s
first book, Manderley, was
selected for the 2000 National Poetry Series by Robert
Pinsky, and received critical acclaim. Publisher’s
Weekly wrote that it "tears mosses off the
old manse of Du Maurier's haunted classic Rebecca,
tosses them with a heady late ’90s bravura."
Wolff earned a MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in
1993 and founded the literary journal Fence in 1997.
Her poems have appeared in Paris Review, Grand Street,
Exquisite Corpse, and other journals. She lives in New
York City where she edits Fence and works as a freelance
copyeditor.
Figment will be published by W.
W. Norton & Co. in the spring of 2004, and Barnard will
host a reading to celebrate the book.
read
the entire press release.
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The
Women Poets at
Barnard Series
Throughout its history, Women Poets at
Barnard has collaborated with publishers to publish the
work of American female writers, to show readers that, as
Mona Van Duyn remarked, "in the rich and multi-directional
advances of American poetry, young women are in the
forefront." Sixteen debut collections were published by
Beacon Press through the Barnard New Women Poets Prize,
supported by Beacon,
the Axe-Houghton Foundation, and the generous alumnae of Barnard
College. Copies of books from original series from 1986-1999 are
available through the English Department. [order
form]
In the new century, Women Poets at
Barnard, in collaboration with W.W. Norton, inaugurated a
new book prize for the best second book by an American
woman poet. For information about the Barnard Women Poets series published by W. W.
Norton & Co., published from 2004-the present, click here.
Women Poets at Barnard has hosted free
public readings for nineteen years. The series highlights
the extraordinary work of women in the art, and encourages
the study of contemporary poetry in the context of women's
contribution to it. We present writers from different
aesthetic disciplines, whose reputations are established
or still emerging, to broaden our audience's experience of
poetry's range and effects.
Current Readings:
summarized schedule
This
series is supported by Barnard College.
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