Samuel Washington Allen Prize: Jennifer Garfield
Jennifer Garfield‘s poetry has appeared in journals including The Threepenny Review, ONE ART, Frontier, SWWIM, Sugar House Review, MER, On The Seawall, and elsewhere. Her work has also been included in Mass Poetry’s Hard Work of Hope Series, and The Red Letter Project. Her awards include multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, an Illinois Arts Council Literary Grant, a Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship, a Renaissance House Residency, and the 2024 Samuel Washington Allen Prize from The New England Poetry Club. She is a high school English teacher outside Boston.
Amy Lowell Prize: Laura Rodley
Pushcart Prize winner and photographer Laura Rodley’s latest books are Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and Ribbons and Moths Poems for Children by Kelsay Books, winner of 2024 International Book Awards for Nonfiction, Bronze Moonbeam Book Award, 2025 Bookfest winner for Nonfiction-Outdoors and 2nd place Technical, Book Cover. She is editor and publisher of As You Write It Vols. I to IV and As You Write It Lucky 7, collection of senior memoir from work written in a class she taught for 14 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PClY8G6HQwk
Diana Der Hovanessian Prize: Kymm Coveney
Kymm Coveney (Boston, 1959) lives in Barcelona and spends summers in Jamaica Plain. History of Milk, her translation of award-winning novelist Mónica Ojeda’s poetry collection, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2026. Poems from this collection have been published in Poesía en acción, Poetry Northwest, Latin American Literature Today and The Georgia Review, as well as The New England Poetry Club’s 2022 Prize Winners’ Anthology. Prose translations include Barcelona by Javier Zabala (Nórdica, 2020); Forest Bathing by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles; and Tokyo Travel Sketchbook by Amaia Arrazola (both by Tuttle Publishing, 2020). Kymm’s latest poems are with Molecule: a tiny lit mag; Atrium Poetry; and California Quarterly. More at Better Lies, @kymminbarcelona.bsky.social.
E.E. Cummings Prize: Chard de Niord
Chard deNiord is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Westminster West (Tupelo Press, 2025), One As Other Green Writers Press (2024), and In My Unknowing (University of Pittsburgh Press 2020). He is also the author of two books of interviews with eminent American poets: Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century Poetry (Marick Press, 2011) and I Would Lie To You If I Could (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). deNiord is Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Providence College and co-founder of The New England College MFA Program. He served as poet laureate of Vermont from 2015 to 2019. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife, Liz.
Jean Pedrick Prize: Matthew E. Henry
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. MEH’s publications include Barren Magazine, Had, Lily Poetry, Massachusetts Review, Mayday, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Redivider, Stone Circle Review, Terrain, Whale Road Review, and The Worcester Review. MEH is a high school teacher who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.