Winner and Finalists for the 2024 Narrative Poetry Award
SEPTEMBER 2024
The Laura Boss Poetry Foundation is happy to announce the winning manuscript and finalists for the 2024 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award.
The winning poet is Suzanne Cleary for her manuscript, The Odds. This year’s final judge was Jan Beatty.
Her collection will be published in Spring 2025 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.
Suzanne Cleary
(Photo: David Langley)
Suzanne Cleary's most recent books are Beauty Mark (2013) and Crude Angel (2018). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award of PSA, and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo. Her poems appear in anthologies including Best American Poetry and in journals including The Atlantic, Poetry, and Poetry London. She is Core Faculty in the MFA Creative Writing Program of Converse University.
Jan Beatty, whose newest collection is Dragstripping, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) said of the judging, “It was an adventure and an honor to read the range of manuscripts for the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation book contest. The work of the finalists was compelling and exceptional. The winning manuscript, The Odds by Suzanne Cleary offers a present humanity that speaks of the tender moments of unknowing in all of us. Cleary constructs sure-footed line breaks to support this faithful voice. From the foibles we all experience to dreams of bigger worlds — from the faces of friends to the imaginings of the artist — these moving poems create breath, and room to travel between worlds as we speak to the dead.”
Five finalists were also selected from the more than 200 manuscripts submitted. They will each receive $100 awards and be invited to read poems from their manuscripts at the Poetry Center at PCCC in Paterson, New Jersey on April 26, 2025.
The five finalists and their manuscript titles are: Rowhome in Flickering Light, Daniel Donaghy; A Brief History of My Sex Life, Subhaga Crystal Bacon; BREASTS/MOM, Emily Hyland; Smolder, Colleen Morton Busch; and All the Wrong Things, Susan Rothbard.
