2021 Love & Eros Prize: Winners & Finalists
We are delighted to share the winners, finalists, and longlist of the 2021 Love & Eros Prize! Please join us in congratulating these remarkable poets. Deep gratitude to all who shared powerful, moving poems with us—we are so lucky to have been immersed in the worlds of your work. The winning poems were chosen by Kaveh Akbar and will be published next week.
Winners of the 2021 Love & Eros Prize
1st & $3000— Emily Lawson for “Sand Flats, UT” (February 1, 2022)
Emily Lawson is a 28-year-old poet and stage III colon cancer survivor. A PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of British Columbia, she is a former Poe/Faulkner Fellow in poetry at the University of Virginia, where she taught poetry and served as editor for Meridian. Her poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Sixth Finch, Adroit, Indiana Review, Waxwing, THRUSH, Muzzle, DIAGRAM, BOAAT, and elsewhere. Her pushcart-nominated fiction appears in BOOTH.
2nd & $300— Maria Nazos for “Hollywood Glacier“ (February 2, 2022)
Maria Nazos’ poetry, essays, and translations are published or forthcoming in The New Yorker, American Life in Poetry, Cherry Tree, Birmingham Poetry Review, North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Florida Review, Rosebud, TriQuarterly, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She served for several years as the editorial assistant for the former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and his nationally syndicated newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry.” A Pushcart nominee, Maria is the author of A Hymn That Meanders (2011 Wising Up Press) and the chapbook Still Life (2016 Dancing Girl Press). She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation, the University of Nebraska, where she took her Ph.D. in Creative Writing, and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives with two crazy felines and a patient veteran-feminist husband who loves the cats though he won’t admit it, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Find her at www.marianazos.com.
3rd & $200— Rachel Abramowitz, for “Restoration” (February 4, 2022)
Rachel Abramowitz’s poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Tin House Online, The Threepenny Review, Seneca Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Oxonian Review, POOL, jubilat, Sprung Formal, Transom, Colorado Review, and others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Oxford, and has taught English Literature at Barnard College in New York.
Finalists
Brenda Taulbee
Brian Holmes
Joshua Garcia
Luke Stringer
Natasha Rao
Sarah Kersey
Shaina Jones
Longlist
Abby Spasser
Abigail McFee
Adedayo Agarau
Alejandro Escude
Alyson Favilla
Andrea Krause
Animashaun Ameen
Ann-Marie Blanchard
Ashley Seitz Kramer
Britt McGillivray
Catalina Ocamp Londoño
E Yeon Chang
Elana Bell
Eszi Waters
Gabriella Balza
Gabrielle Bates
Hedyeh Elahinia
Hila Shachar
Jada Allen
Jerico Lenk
Julia Rapp
Junious Ward
Kailey Giordano
Kari Flickinger
Kate Gaskin
Mag Gabbert
Malene Engelund
Marisa Webster
Melanie McCabe
Nadine Klassen
Nubia Kai
Octavio Gonzalez
Petra Salazar
Ronda Broatch
Sara Martin
Shannon Hardwick
Sierra Nelson
Sreshtha Sen
Staci Halt
Stephanie Chang
Tim Lynch
William Hicks
Yaccaira Salvatierra