2023 Rising Poet Prize: Winners & Finalists
We are delighted to share the winners, finalists, and longlist for the 2023 Rising Poet Prize! Please help us congratulate these up and coming poets. Deep gratitude to all who shared moving poems with us—we are so lucky to have been immersed in the worlds of your work. The winning poem and runner-ups were selected by Maggie Smith and will be published in the coming weeks.
Winners of the 2023 Rising Poet Prize
1st place — Logan Klutse for “Sidewalk”
Logan Klutse is a poet and playwright from Lakewood, Colorado. He graduated from Yale University in May 2023 with B.A.s in English and Theater Studies, where he received fellowships from the Richter Fund, the Michael Manzella Foundation, and the Gordon Grand Fund, as well as the John Hersey Prize and the Albert Stanburrough Cook Prize, among other awards. His poems have appeared in Mason Jar Press, FERAL: a Journal of Poetry and Art, and as part of exhibitions at the Yale University Art Gallery. He is currently a 2023-2024 Gordon Grand Postgraduate Fellow preparing to travel to the U.K. and then Ghana to begin work on his next play and debut poetry manuscript. Keep up with his latest thoughts about poetry and The Legend of Zelda @loganseyram.
2nd place — Aída Esmeralda for “War Leaves a Language (Dream Notes)”
Aída Esmeralda is a queer poet & experimental artist. Born & raised in Virginia, she is also a daughter of the Salvadoran diaspora. She is an MFA poetry candidate at Arizona State University, a Research Fellow for the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, & an Associate Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her work has appeared in La Horchata Zine, Álastor, Granuja, SWWIM, & Gulf Coast.
3rd place — Mia Kang for “Tony Reflects on Form”
Mia Kang (she/her) is the author of City Poems (ignitionpress, 2020). Her recent work appears in Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, wildness, and more. Named the 2017 winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest, Mia has also been a Brooklyn Poets Fellow, runner-up for the 2019 and 2017 Discovery Poetry Contests, and a finalist for the 2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Mia is a PhD candidate in the history of art at Yale University, where she studies the contested rise of U.S. multiculturalism and its legacies. She lives in Philadelphia. www.miaadrikang.com
Finalists
Rachel Harkai
MT Vallarta
Jennifer Loyd
Oona Mackinnon-Hoban
Chaun Ballard
Arianne Alizio
Raye Hendrix
Longlist
Courtney DuChene
Wen Lim
Carling McManus
Sherah Bloor
Jessica Smith
Thomas Sorensen
Melody Ruediger
Mollie Coles Tonn
Rebecca Martin
Mihir Bellamkonda
Asa Drake
Emma DeNaples
Courtney Huse Wika
Jillian Hanson
Adara Coker
Karan Kapoor
Julie Lynn
Keighly Baron
Cynthia Ventresca
Tyler Mortensen-Hayes
Anushka Roy
Shaymaa Mahmoud
Caitlin Roach Orduña
Mishal Syed
Jeremy Morris
Matti Apse
Leonore Tjia
Alexandra Risley Schroeder
Michelle Patton
Marina Smolens
Andrea Giugni
Emma DeNaples
Lindsay Adkins
Parker Logan
Courtney Huse Wika
Genevieve DeGuzman
Madeleine Bazil
Hailey Gross
Henry Mills
Dallas Atlas
Cynthia Ventresca
Sarah Gass
Cherie Rankin
C Heyne
Paul Arney