Starrett Poetry Prize goes to Eleanor Boudreau of Florida

Eleanor Boudreau’s “Earnest, Earnest?” has won the 2019 University of Pittsburgh Press Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize.

Eleanor BoudreauThe collection was selected from more than 600 submissions and will be published by Pitt Press next fall. Boudreau also will receive a $5,000 cash prize.

Boudreau lives in Tallahassee, Fla., where she is finishing her Ph.D. at Florida State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and an MFA from the University of Houston.

Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Barrow Street, Waxwing, Willow Springs, FIELD, Copper Nickel, and other journals. Boudreau was Florida State University's nominee for the Best New Poets anthology, a finalist for the Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award, a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Competition, a semi-finalist for the Fordham University Press Poets Out Loud Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize.

The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize is a national literary award for a first full-length book of poetry in the English language. Initiated by Ed Ochester and developed by Frederick A. Hetzel, the prize is named for a former director of the University of Pittsburgh Press.