Cart 0
Log in
Donate

Your Cart

Subtotal: $0.00

Does not include service & handling fees, if applicable.

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, Mary Jo Bang and Solmaz Sharif, to name but a few.

The winners of this year’s contest are Alfredo Aguilar, Bernard Ferguson, Omotara James and Alycia Pirmohamed. Each one receives a reading at 92Y, publication in The Paris Review Daily, a two-night stay at the Ace Hotel and $500.

The runners-ups are Mia Kang, Henry Mills and Jasmine Reid.

This year’s preliminary judges were Timothy Donnelly and Mai Der Vang. Daniel Borzutzky, Randall Mann and Patricia Smith served as final judges.

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

Winners

Alfredo Aguilar

Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is the author of the chapbook What Happens on Earth …

Alfredo Aguilar

Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is the author of the chapbook What Happens on Earth. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Best New Poets 2017, The Shallow Ends and elsewhere. Originally from North County San Diego, he now resides in Texas.

Bernard Ferguson

Bernard Ferguson is a Bahamian immigrant poet, an MFA candidate at NYU, a Writers in the Public Schools fellow and an Assistant Editor at Washington Square Review …

Bernard Ferguson

Bernard Ferguson is a Bahamian immigrant poet, an MFA candidate at NYU, a Writers in the Public Schools fellow and an Assistant Editor at Washington Square Review. He’s the winner of the 2019 Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Prize, a 2019 Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholar and his work is published or forthcoming in The Common, SLICE Magazine, Pinwheel, Winter Tangerine and Best New Poets 2017.

Omotara James

Omotara James is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set …

Omotara James

Omotara James is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Academy of American Poets, Literary Hub, Poetry Society of America and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary and the Cave Canem Foundation.

Alycia Pirmohamed

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet living in Scotland, where she is completing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh …

Alycia Pirmohamed

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet living in Scotland, where she is completing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of the chapbook Faces that Fled the Wind, and the winner of the 2018 Ploughshares Emerging Writers’ Contest in Poetry. Her poetry has recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, The London Magazine, Room Magazine, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and others. Alycia received an MFA from the University of Oregon.

Preliminary Judges

Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit and The Cloud Corporation, for which he won the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award …

Timothy Donnelly

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit and The Cloud Corporation, for which he won the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His honors include fellowships from the New York State Writers Institute and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is associate professor in the graduate writing program at Columbia University.

Mai Der Vang

Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland, for which she won the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, …

Mai Der Vang

Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland, for which she won the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she is a member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle where she co-edited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology.

Final Judges

Daniel Borzutzky

Daniel Borzutzky is the author of Lake Michigan and The Performance of Becoming Human, for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry …

Daniel Borzutzky

Daniel Borzutzky is the author of Lake Michigan and The Performance of Becoming Human, for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry. His translation of Chilean poet Galo Ghigliotto’s Valdivia won the 2017 National Translation Award for Poetry. His other books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy and The Book of Interfering Bodies. His work has been recognized by grants from the PEN American Center and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Randall Mann

Randall Mann is the author of Complaint in the Garden, for which he won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry; …

Randall Mann

Randall Mann is the author of Complaint in the Garden, for which he won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry; Breakfast with Thom Gunn; Straight Razor and Proprietary. Three times a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, he received the 2013 J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize for Poetry.

Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, for which she won the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, …

Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, for which she won the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, for which she won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, for which she was a National Book Award finalist. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam.

Semi-Finalists

Faith Arkorful
Chelsea B. DesAutels
Jean Balderston
Adam Bangser
Lesya Bazylewicz
Jeanette Beebe
Heather Bourbeau
Kinsey Cantrell
Holli Carrell
William Leo Coakley
Caitlin Cowan
Ann DeVilbiss
Ruth Dickey
Richard Downing
Asa Drake
Joe Gutierrez
W.J. Herbert
Jose Hernandez Diaz
Jordan Hewson
Paul Ceballos Hlava
Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Christopher Janigian
Robert Julius
Trevor Ketner
Michael Lee
Esther Lin
Lucia LoTempio
Mark Mazzoli
Marcus Myers
C. L. O'Dell
Nathan Osorio
Oscar Oswald
Allyson Paty
Laura Paul Watson
Richard Quigley
Rob Shapiro
D. M. Spratley
Taylor Supplee
Jeannette Vautier
Nick Visconti
Ralf Webb
Jihyun Yun
Kelleen Zubick