Pittsburgh, PA — Bobby Elliott of Portland, Oregon, is the winner of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for his collection, The Same Man, selected by poet Nate Marshall. The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish The Same Man as part of the acclaimed Pitt Poetry Series on September 9, 2025.

“Bobby Elliott’s The Same Man confronts the subject of fatherhood with an honesty and tenderness rarely accorded to the typical secondary parent. In these poems, we see a pair of imperfect men reach toward each other and, indeed, toward the work of both fathering and being fathered,” states Nate Marshall, author of Finna. “These are the kinds of poems that truly ring of a journey toward healing and forgiveness—but not the saccharine healing we see in media that demands succinct, neat endings. These poems sing of real human healing, which is a messed up and often incomplete process, but is perhaps the holiest one we can submit to in our lives. Elliott is a bard of the familial experience. These are poems to hold tight.”

A one-of-a-kind debut that asks what we owe those we love, The Same Man is an aching chronicle of the early days of parenthood and the ever-present wounds of the past. Haunting these tender and searing portraits of family life is a father-figure-turned-grandfather capable of connection and neglect, child-like joy, and profound darkness. Taking up the legacy of suicidal ideation, the toll of being responsible for a father’s life and a child’s, and the deep—and largely unspoken—traumas that shape us, Elliott’s debut is a relentless effort towards independence and expression. In poems that range from spare to incantatory, from blissful to enraged, The Same Man represents the arrival of an authentic new voice in American poetry.

“Winning the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize is a dream come true,” states Elliott. “I can still remember holding a copy of Reginald Shepherd’s Some Are Drowning back when I was an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College, and my journey since has been paved by Pitt Poetry Series poets—life-changing voices like Nate Marshall, Toi Derricotte, Ross Gay, Sharon Olds, Larry Levis, and Richard Blanco. Above all, I want to thank Nate Marshall for opening this door—I’ve loved his work since Wild Hundreds won this same prize ten years ago and I am deeply grateful for the way he’s met these poems and given them a profoundly beautiful home.”

Bobby Elliott is an award-winning poet and educator. Raised in New York City, he earned his BA from Sarah Lawrence College and his MFA from the University of Virginia, where he was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow and won the Kahn Prize for Teaching for his work with undergraduate writers. His poems have appeared in RHINO, Poet Lore, Redivider, BOAAT and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and sons.

 

The Same Man by Bobby Elliott will be published in paperback by the University of Pittsburgh Press with an on-sale date of September 9, 2025  ·  88 pp  ·  6 x 9  ·  ISBN 9780822967491 · Paper $20.00  · eBook available