2024 Sappho Prize: Winners & Finalists
We are delighted to share the winners, finalists, and longlist for the 2024 Sappho Prize for Women Poets! Please join us in congratulating these brilliant 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 guest judge Megan Fernandes and are published on the Palette website.
Winners of the 2024 Sappho Prize
1st place — Rebecca Hawkes for “PHYLLODES REVERIES”
Rebecca Hawkes is a queer painter-poet originally from rural Aotearoa New Zealand. Her book Meat Lovers won Best First International Collection in the UK Poet Laureate’s 2022 Laurel Prize and was a Lambda Literary award finalist. She is head shepherd of the hot-blooded literary journal Sweet Mammalian and co-edited the Pacific climate poetry anthology No Other Place to Stand. Rebecca is currently topsy-turvy between hemispheres, studying an MFA in yearning (and, to a lesser extent, poetry) at the University of Michigan. Her chapbooks Softcore Coldsores and Hardcore Pastorals can be found in the AUP New Poets series and Cordite, with more poems published and forthcoming in places like Salt Hill, Hobart, Glass, and Best New Zealand Poems. Selected words and work can be found at www.rebeccahawkesart.com
2nd place — JC Andrews for “Gargoyle”
JC Andrews is a poet from Springfield, Arkansas with an interest in poems that work as an un-ing, poems that hold questions as a form of caretaking. Most recently, her work can be found in Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She was also the winner of the 2023 Columbia Print Contest and is currently pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
3rd place — Mirande Bissell for “Master of the Female Half-Lengths”
Mirande Bissell is a teacher and poet who lives in the Patapsco River Valley, west of Baltimore. Her first book of poems, Stalin at the Opera, won the Ghost Peach Press Prize and was published in 2021.
Finalists
Finola Cahill
Julia Hori
Anne Haven McDonnell
Kristen Mears
Monae Murillo
Bleah Patterson
Allison Tervo
Longlist
Connie Braun
Bella Campbell
Eartha Davis
Kate DeLay
Leah Naomi Green
Catherine Harnett
Jennifer Harrison
Waverly Huang
Cynthia Knorr
Joyeeta Majumdar
Jill McDonough
Barbara Mossberg
Anjali Mulcock
Adrianna Padula
Lexi Pelle
Isabella Pozo
Mal Profeta
Annie Quigley