Winners’ Reading for the 2023 Frank O’Hara Prize

Join the winners of the WCPA’s 2023 Annual Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize for a reading of their work and the work of contest judge Karen Skolfield. There will be an opportunity to mingle over refreshments as well.

First Place: Rebecca Cross with “They Do This And Call It Mercy”

Second Place: John Garton with “Vernon”

Third Place: Irena Kaçi with “Onions”

Honorable Mention: Claire Schaeffer-Duffy with “Let Her Dance”

Karen Skolfield was our 2023 Contest Judge.

Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and was a “Must Read” selection from the Massachusetts Center for the Book. She is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in poetry from The Missouri Review and has won additional awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, New England Public Radio, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Split This Rock, Hedgebrook, and elsewhere. She loves volunteering in the public schools and bringing a little poetry into the classroom, but she can’t decide if she prefers kindergarteners (so sweet!) or teenagers (hard to win over, but the winning is glorious). Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her MFA; she served as poet laureate for Northampton, MA for 2019-2022. www.karenskolfield.com