2026 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award Winner and Finalists
Laura Boss Poetry Foundation
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 1, 2026
The 2026 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award Winner and Finalists
Today, the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation announced the winning manuscript and finalists for the 2026 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award.
The winning poet is Kathryn Hunt for her manuscript When You Wake Near the Sea. This year’s final judge was Dante Di Stefano.
Her collection will be published in Spring 2027 by NYQ Books. This award includes a $5,000 prize, twenty-five author copies, and a featured reading at the book’s release.
Kathryn Hunt is a poet based in Port Townsend, Washington, on the coast of the Salish Sea. She is the author of two poetry collections, Long Way Through Ruin and Seed Wheel. She has recently completed a memoir, The Last Chance Motel, a mother-daughter tale. Her poems have appeared in Orion, Radar, Sun, Narrative, Missouri Review, and Carolina Quarterly Review. She has translated the work of Catalan poet Maria-Mercè Marçal. Earlier in her creative life, she directed films. Her film No Place Like Home premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival, and Take this Heart was awarded the Anna Quindlen Award for Broadcast Journalism. She is the founder and artistic curator of Poetry on the Salish Sea, a series that has hosted more than sixty poets since 2023.
Dante Di Stefano is the author of five poetry collections, a chapbook, and most recently, the book-length poem, The Widowing Radiance.
Di Stefano said of Hunt’s collection:
“At once sophisticated and accessible, When You Wake Near the Sea unfolds with the fury of the prairie and the magnificence of the Pacific. In the Rilkean ardor of this collection, the poems constellate fathers and mothers, daughters and sisters, blood relatives and chosen family, lovers and coves and tidelands and blades of grass, in the long arc of a life lived with two fingers to the wrist of literature and art. These poems are hinges, green openings into and out of the griefs and joys that connect us as human beings. Gogol and Mandelstam ride shotgun in the Datsun of bygone years, and the poet sings from there with clarity, virtuosic control, and the irresistible driving pulse of one who has listened to Dickinson’s mermaids in the basement and who has memorized the meters of siren and shoreline alike.”
Five finalists were also selected from the more than two hundred manuscripts submitted. Each will receive $100 awards and have been invited to read from their manuscript at The Poetry Center at PCCC in Paterson, New Jersey, on April 24, 2027. The finalists are Katherine Gekker, Time Keeps Watch; Olga Maslova, Wolf Rondo in A Minor; Cindy Milwe, The Body Center; Cat Dixon, Waiting for the Call, and Mary Makofske, Heart Lightning.
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 2027 Award will be from January 1, 2027 to March 31, 2027. The final judge will be Richard Blanco.
See https://laurabosspoetryfoundation.org/award for contest details.
Media Contact: Michelle Lerner, Foundation Director, laurabosspoetyrtfoundation@gmail.com
