The 2025 Poet of the Year Prize Winners
POET OF THE YEAR
AIDAN CHAFE
Awarded $3000
Aidan Chafe is a writer and teacher. His poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, EVENT, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Montreal Review of Books and PRISM international. He is the author of the poetry collections: Gospel Drunk (University of Alberta Press, 2021) and Short Histories of Light (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018), which was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC).
Read Aidan’s poetry + interview on August 31, 2025
POET OF THE YEAR FINALISTS
Awarded $500 each
jason b. crawford
jason b. crawford (They/He) born in Washington DC and raised in Lansing, MI, is the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz. Their second collection, YEET! is the winner of the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize and will be published Fall 2025.
Read jason’s poetry + interview on August 3, 2025
Jenny Qi
Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, High Country News, and elsewhere. She is working on a hybrid collection and a memoir in conversation with her late mother’s writings. She holds a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from UCSF.
Read Jenny’s poetry + interview on August 10, 2025
Isabella Borgeson
Isabella “Isa” Borgeson (she/they) is a queer, mixed race, filipino american poet and community organizer from Oakland. Their poetry is influenced by their years organizing in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda. Isa aims to use their storytelling to visibilize the impact of climate change on their home(land)s, from Oakland to Tanauan.
Read Isabella’s poetry + interview on August 17, 2025
Natasha Oladokun
Natasha Oladokun is a Black, queer poet and essayist from Virginia. They hold fellowships from Cave Canem, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they were the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. Oladokun’s work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, The Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. She is writing her first poetry collection.
Read Natasha’s poetry + interview on August 24, 2025