2025 Winner and Finalists for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award
NEWS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 1, 2026
The 2025 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award Winner and Finalists
The Laura Boss Poetry Foundation announced today the winning manuscript and finalists for the 2025 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award.
The winning poet is Terry Hall Bodine of Virginia for her manuscript Neither Are Crows. This year’s final judge was Joe Weil.
Her collection will be published in Spring 2026 by NYQ Books. [https://www.nyq.org/books/] This award includes a $5,000 prize, 25 author copies, and a featured reading at the book’s release.
Terry Hall Bodine is the author of the chapbook The Something We Make from Nothing (Seven Kitchens Press, 2024). Other recent publication credits include Cider Press Review, San Pedro River Review, Pine Row Press, and Litmosphere.
Joe Weil, whose most recent collection is Helping the Village Idiot Feed the Chickens (Vendetta Press, 2020), said of Neither Are Crows:
“What I found triumphant about Neither Are Crows is the humility, accuracy, and sometimes gentle, sometimes dark humor of the poems. There is no showing off, yet there is subtle and constant trickery of the best sort. The poems remind me of the work of Robert Francis in their attention to detail and sound, though the world they describe is nothing like his rural Andover. The people and the landscape are one. They grow out of each other, out of flat lands and prairies. The book is held together by allusions to The Wizard of Oz, and that conceit is fully justified. Terry Hall Bodine deals superbly with both the mythos and reality of her Midwestern landscape. Not a single poem in Neither Are Crows is unnecessary. Not a single poem fails to give pleasure.”
Five finalists were also selected from the more than 200 manuscripts submitted. They will each receive a $100 award and be invited to read poems from their manuscripts at The Poetry Center at PCCC in Paterson, New Jersey, on April 25, 2026.
The five finalists and their manuscript titles are: The Hard Problem, Sarah Anne Stinnett; Rowhome in Flickering Light, Daniel Donaghy; Bird Mnemonic, Kelleen Zubick; Telling, Mary Paulson; and Cosmic Idiot, Michael Montlack.
The Foundation was created as a tribute to poet Laura Boss and her mission of supporting poets and poetry. In addition to this award, the Foundation financially supports the publication of the Lips poetry magazine, which Laura started in 1981 and edited until her passing in 2021. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) corporation, and all contributions to support its work are tax-deductible.
The submission period for the 2026 Award will be from January 1, 2026, to March 31, 2026. The final judge will be Marge Piercy.
https://laurabosspoetryfoundation.org
Media Contact: Michelle Lerner, Foundation Director, laurabosspoetyrtfoundation@gmail.com
