Nathan Xavier Osorio of Los Angeles, California, is the winner of the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for his collection Querida. Osorio’s debut collection was selected by poet Shara McCallum. The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish Querida as part of the acclaimed Pitt Poetry Series on September 10, 2024. “Memory is a guiding force in Nathan Osorio’s stunning debut, Querida,” states Shara McCallum. “From the opening, single-sentence tour-de-force of a poem to sonnet-sequences throughout, Osorio’s formal agility and singular voice takes hold of our attention and never lets it go.” Querida is a place-based lyrical meditation on the…

The Pitt Poetry Series at the University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, selected by Shara McCallum: How We Keep Each Other Company by Talia Bloch The Living Sign by Colby Cotton What God in the Kingdom of Bastards by Brian Gyamfi Querida by Nathan Osorio The winner will be announced on December 18, 2023. Established in 1981, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, named in honor of the Press’s first director, is awarded for a first full-length book of poems. The prize carries a cash award of $5,000…

Ryler Dustin of Bellingham, Washington is the 2022 winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for his collection Trailer Park Psalms. Dustin’s debut collection was selected by poet Jeffrey McDaniel. The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish Trailer Park Psalms as part of the acclaimed Pitt Poetry Series this fall (on-sale date: September 12, 2023). “I love how these poems play to our senses, how the tactile details—courtesy of taut diction and the author’s attentive ear—come to life in the reader’s mind,” says Jeffrey McDaniel. “And the high level of elegance and wisdom in these pages; Dustin dives into…

Anuradha Bhowmik of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is the 2021 winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for her collection Brown Girl Chromatography, selected by new Starrett Poetry Prize judge and award-winning poet Aaron Smith. Bhowmik, a Bangladeshi-American poet and writer from South Jersey, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Pitt Poetry Series this fall, on sale September 2022. “Brown Girl Chromatography is pure fire, a slow burn to the center of desire,” said Smith. “This is a book of longing, of brokenness, of makeup (‘my second art, the perfect counterpart to my alter ego’), of…

Laura Kolbe of Brooklyn, NY is the 2020 winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for her collection Little Pharma. Kolbe, a physician, medical ethicist, and poet, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press/Pitt Poetry Series next fall. “The earliest of these poems were written in my first year of medical school in 2012, with the bulk of them written during my medical residency, a grueling and surreal time in my life,” said Kolbe, a native of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. “Writing the poems felt like growing a subsistence garden—what do I need to make to survive? Or…