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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. Will you be next?

Four winners receive a reading at 92Y, publication in The Paris Review Daily, a two-night residency at the ACE Hotel and $500 each.

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

Applications must be submitted by Friday, January 8, 2021, at 5 pm.

To apply, read the guidelines and submit here.

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

Preliminary Judges

Timothy Donnelly

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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.