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Unterberg Poetry Center

Discovery Poetry Contest

The Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prizes

For over 60 years 92Y’s Discovery Contest has launched the careers of major poets like John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Mark Strand, Larry Levis, Mary Jo Bang, Solmaz Sharif and Diana Khoi Nguyen, to name but a few.

The winners of this year's contest are Kenzie Allen, Ina Cariño, Mag Gabbert and Alexandra Zukerman. Each one receives a reading at 92Y, publication in The Paris Review Daily, a stay at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan and $500.

The runners-ups are Walter Ancarrow, Hannah Loeb, Dāshaun Washington and JinJin Xu.

This year’s preliminary judges were Timothy Donnelly and Julia Guez, winner of the Discovery Prize in 2013. Rick Barot, Mónica de la Torre and Patricia Spears Jones served as final judges.

This contest is endowed by Joan L. and Dr. Julius H. Jacobson, II.

Winners

Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen is a poet and multimodal artist and a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin …

Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen is a poet and multimodal artist and a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. She holds a PhD in English & Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA in Poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her poems can be found in Boston Review, Narrative Magazine and The Adroit Journal. She is the recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and the Aspen Writers’ Foundation. Born in West Texas, she currently lives and teaches in Toronto.

Ina Cariño

Ina Cariño

Ina Cariño holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University …

Ina Cariño

Ina Cariño

Ina Cariño holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears in Apogee, Wildness, Waxwing, New England Review and Tupelo Quarterly. They are a Kundiman fellow, a recipient of a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for their manuscript, Feast, which is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2023.

Mag Gabbert

Mag Gabbert

Mag Gabbert holds a PhD from Texas Tech University and an MFA from The University of California at Riverside …

Mag Gabbert

Mag Gabbert

Mag Gabbert holds a PhD from Texas Tech University and an MFA from The University of California at Riverside. Her essays and poems can be found in 32 Poems, Pleiades, The Massachusetts Review, Waxwing and The Pinch. She is the author of Minml Poems, a chapbook of visual poetry and nonfiction. She’s received poetry fellowships from Idyllwild Arts and Poetry at Round Top. She teaches creative writing at Southern Methodist University and serves as the Interviews editor for Underblong Journal.

Alexandra Zukerman

Alexandra Zukerman

Alexandra Zukerman is a poet and photographer. Originally from New York, she has spent time in many places …

Alexandra Zukerman

Alexandra Zukerman

Alexandra Zukerman is a poet and photographer. Originally from New York, she has spent time in many places meaningful to her. She studied at Harvard and completed an MFA at NYU this spring, where she also taught undergraduate courses. She is currently at work on her first manuscript of poems.

Preliminary Judges

Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit …

Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit; The Cloud Corporation, for which he won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and The Problem of Many.

Julia Guez

Julia Guez

Julia Guez’s poetry and translations have appeared in Guernica, POETRY, The Brooklyn Rail and Kenyon Review …

Julia Guez

Julia Guez

Julia Guez’s poetry and translations have appeared in Guernica, POETRY, The Brooklyn Rail and Kenyon Review. She is the author of In An Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also A Frame. She was awarded the 2013 Discovery Poetry Prize and The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation.

Final Judges

Rick Barot

Rick Barot

Rick Barot is the author of Chord, winner of PEN Open Book Award and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award …

Rick Barot

Rick Barot

Rick Barot is the author of Chord, winner of PEN Open Book Award and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award, and The Galleons, among others. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artist Trust of Washington, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and Stanford University. In 2020, Barot received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Mónica de la Torre

Mónica de la Torre

Born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico, Mónica de la Torre is the author of four books of poetry …

Mónica de la Torre

Mónica de la Torre

Born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico, Mónica de la Torre is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Repetition Nineteen and a translation of Defense of the Idol by Chilean modernist Omar Cáceres. She coedited, with Michael Wiegers, the collection Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry. Recent writing appears in Artforum, A Public Space and The Literary Review.

Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones is a Brooklyn-based African American poet. Her most recent collection of poems, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems …

Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones is a Brooklyn-based African American poet. Her most recent collection of poems, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s 2016 William Carlos Williams Prize, as well as for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her honors include Poets and Writers’ Jackson Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and awards from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Goethe-Institut, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the New York Community Trust.

Semi-Finalists

Rachel Abramowitz
Kemi Alabi
Selma Asotić
Zachary Bos
Mariah Bosch
Julia Burgdorff
Zoe Canner
Brian Cochran
Madeleine Cravens
Laura Cresté
Marissa Davis
Rachel Edelman
April Goldman
Nicholas Goodly
Lauren Green
Greer Gurland
Kathryn Haemmerle
Destiny Hemphill
Darren Higgins
Patrycja Humienik
Spencer Hupp
Tatiana Johnson-Boria
Shilpa Kamat
Mia Kang
Kelly B Madden
Olivia Mardwig
Maggie Millner
Lena Moses-Schmitt
C. L. O'Dell
Alison Palmer
Karen Pittelman
Kathleen Radigan
Nick Rattner
Austin Rodenbiker
Sahar Romani
Ben Seanor
Rob Shapiro
Yvette Siegert
imogen xtian smith
Nick Stanovick
Sophia Stid
Hannah Webster
Lauren Winchester
Mariya Zilberman

Read selections by last year’s winners: Asa Drake, Luther Hughes, Ana Portnoy Brimmer and Daniella Toosie-Watson.