2024 Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize Winners
WINNER — AWARDED $1000
Natasha Oladokun
“Benedetta Carlini at Deviance, Crucible”
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 winning poem on February 14, 2025
FINALIST — AWARDED $250
Jaia Hamid Bashir is a South Asian-American artist. Her work has been featured in POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, The Arkansas International, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, and Virginia Quarterly Review. A graduate of Columbia University, she now lives and writes in the American West with her partner. Her chapbook "Desire/Halves" is set to be published in Fall 2024.
FINALIST — AWARDED $250
Margaret Wack
Margaret Wack is the author of the chapbook The Body Problem, winner of the 2021 Orison Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in EcoTheo Review, Passages North, Grist, Strange Horizons, Arion, and elsewhere. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at North Carolina State University.
FINALIST — AWARDED $250
Imogen Osborne
“Rewards”
Imogen Osborne is a writer based in Ithaca, NY. She is a recent MFA graduate of Cornell’s creative writing program and currently teaches creative writing to college students and incarcerated adults. You can find poems, stories and essays on her website.
Read Imogen’s poem on February 7, 2025
FINALIST — AWARDED $250
Savannah Massey
“sappho when raised southern baptist”
Savannah Massey is a student at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. There, she is Editor-in-Chief of the student literary magazine. She is a 2025 YoungArts winner with Distinction in Poetry. Her work is published across over 20 international institutions.
Read Savannah’s poem on February 7, 2025
Cat Wei, “The Last Touch”
Christopher Allen, “Filled”
Sam Bovard, “Men who have sex with men”
Isha Camara, “Poem written after I ate the sun”
m. mick powell, “I know enough about moderation”
Jeremy Radin, “The Song of Songs of Songs of Songs”
Corey Zeller, “One Hand Flat Against the Trapdoor, the Other Hand Knocking”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
