The 2023 Award For New Poets Winners and Finalists!
Congratulations to the gifted emerging poet Ira Goga, winner of the 2023 Award for New Poets! The team at Frontier Poetry is deeply grateful for everyone that submitted their work–we see you and we thank you. We’d also like to thank you for your patience while our team carefully reviewed all the of extraordinary work.
Ira Goga has been selected for the $3,000 prize by our esteemed guest judge, torrin a. greathouse. Yingqi Sally Lu is our 2nd place winner and Yola Gómez our third. We are so excited to share their work with you this April and May!
WINNER
Ira Goga
“Twelve Thousand Pounds of Salt”
To be published on April 17, 2024
Ira Goga graduated from Smith College with a BA in biochemistry. Their poetry has appeared in The Best New Poets 2023, DIALOGIST, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. They have received support from the Ucross Foundation and the Academy of American Poets. They are currently pursuing an MFA at UT Austin.
2nd Place
Yingqi Sally Lu
“Self-Portrait as Apples to Apples”
To be published on April 24, 2024
Yingqi Sally Lu is a writer from Shanghai, currently living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she attends the United World College in Mostar. Her work has been recognized by The Adroit Prize and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. When not writing, she can be found enjoying a hot chocolate in her favorite café or wandering around the small town of Mostar looking for antiques and Asian seasonings.
3rd Place
Yola Gómez
“Free Museum Day”
To be published on May 1, 2024
Yola Gómez is a first generation queer xicanx trans non-binary activist and writer. Growing up on the US-Mexico border, their activism and writing grew out of personal experiences with racism and violence. Yola has sought to use their experiences as a means to agitate, educate, and organize others. In 2019, Yola graduated with an MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University. Soon after, in 2020, they won Flying Ketchup’s Hybrid Manuscript Award for their unpublished book, “We’ve Always Been Weeping and Searching for the Dead”. Their work has been featured Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century and the forthcoming anthology, “Weeping Women: The Haunting Presence of La Llorona in Mexican and Chicanx Lore.” Their work appears in literary journals including Entropy, Nat.Brut, Utterance, Abolition Feminisms Vol. 2: Feminist Ruptures against the Carceral State, and Cuttthroat. They recently co-authored a piece titled, “Today’s Lynching is Incarceration”: Critical Race Theory, Mass Incarceration, and Prison Abolition” in Mass Incarceration in the 21st Century Realities and Reflections. Yola defines themself as an academic outsider and literary saboteur keeping their sights set on abolition. They are currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Oregon State University’s Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies PhD program.
The Finalists
Raza Ayoob
J.W. Carroll
Hailey Gross
Eva Haas
Carling McManus
Katie Nelson
Brit Siler Sinnott
The Longlist
AJ Baumel
Matthew Buxton
Matthew Church
Nain Chrisopherson
Gray Davidson Carroll
Sophie Farthing
Melissa Higley
Billy Judd
KB Kinkel
Isabella Martinez
Muhammed Olowonjoyin
Arnecia Patterson
Erin Pinkham
Caroline Schmidt
Cheryl Solver-Linett
Timothy Stobierski
Chloe Tsolakoglou
Wendy Watkins
Churan Xu
