We are so excited to announce that Marilyn Chin has selected OPIUM AND AMBERGRIS by Colin Dekeersgieter as the winner of the 2023 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Colin will receive $2500 and a one-week fellowship to lead a creative writing workshop at Kent State University in the fall of 2024. He will also give a reading with prize judge Marylin Chin.
Colin Dekeersgieter is a poet, editor, and teacher living in North Carolina with his wife, writer Alisa Koyrakh. His work has appeared in The Greensboro Review, North American Review, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MA from the CUNY, Graduate Center and an MFA from New York University. Colin currently serves as the poetry editor for The Carolina Quarterly and is a PhD candidate at UNC, Chapel Hill. OPIUM AND AMBERGRIS will be published by The Kent State University Press in the fall of 2024.
This prize is offered annually to a poet who has not previously published a full-length collection of poems. The prize awards the winner with $2,500 and publication of their first full-length book of poetry by the Kent State University Press. The winner and the competition's judge will give a reading together on the Kent State campus.