November 24, 2020
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…