Boston Review, in partnership with the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, proudly presents the winners of the Discovery / Boston Review 2017 Poetry Contest awarding the Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prizes. Now in its seventh decade, the contest recognizes and celebrates exceptional work by poets who have not yet published a first book. Many of the contest’s past winners—including John Ashbery, Mary Jo Bang, Lucille Clifton, Nick Flynn, Debora Greger, Sherod Santos, and Mark Strand—have gone on to distinguished writing careers. This year’s competition received almost 1,000 submissions, all of which were read anonymously by preliminary judges francine j. harris and Boston Review poetry co-editor Timothy Donnelly. After much deliberating, final judges Henri Cole, Douglas Kearney, and Monica Youn awarded this year’s prizes to James Henry Knippen, Erika Luckert, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Courtney Faye Taylor. The three runners-up are Kerry Carnahan, Julie Danho, and Mia Kang. Winners read from their work at the Unterberg Poetry Center in New York on May 8, 2017.
