Congratulations to member Jennifer Freed for winning the 2022 Frank O’Hara Prize.
The O’Hara Prize, awarded annually by the Worcester County Poetry Association (WCPA), was established in 1973. Freed’s poem “Kangaroos in Kharkiv” was selected by contest judge Usman Hameedi from the 89 submissions by 34 entrants.
The winning poems will be published in the next edition of The Worcester Review, the nationally recognized journal of the WCPA. The winners also receive a cash award. All the winners are invited to read their work at the Winners’ Ceremony and Reading on Sunday, September 25, 2022, at 3:00 p.m. The Winners’ Reading will be held at the First Unitarian Church, 90 Main Street, Worcester. Contest judge Usman Hameedi will be our featured reader that afternoon.
Jennifer also received an Honorable Mention for the Connecticut Poetry Award, for the poem “Kinds of People.”
Jennifer L. Freed is the author of When Light Shifts (Kelsay, 2022), a memoir-in-poems about the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage, and of a chapbook, These Hands Still Holding, a finalist in the 2013 New Women’s Voices Competition (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She was awarded the 2020 Samuel Washington Allen Prize for a long poem or poem-sequence (New England Poetry Club), has been a finalist for the Frank O’Hara prize multiple times, and has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Orison Anthology. She leads adult education programs on-line and in-person, and lives in Holden, Massachusetts.