Penrose Poetry Prize: Awarded for Excellence in Poetry from LGBTQIA+ Writers
$200, $100, and $50 cash awards to three winners with works to be published
with a special note on the first place work from our guest judge. 

From Guest Judge Dan Lau on Submissions: “Thanks so much for this opportunity. I love seeing beautiful new work surface.”

From the Editors: “We were so humbled by the outpouring of submissions we received this year (over 700!)
We love getting to know everyone through their writing and are honored to be able to highlight the selected artists We hope you enjoy the work as much as we do.”

On First Place Winner: Samantha Stevens
“to my whole self in every time in relation to no one else”
- From Judge Dan Lau

“to my whole self in every time in relation to no one else” is a cosmic recentering daring to speak from an occupied territory: one's own body. Like topiaries, our bodies are groomed and monitored to go against one’s own nature. Stevens opens a space to divest from the expectations of this public's "cruel museum." This poem is so many things. It is an invocation to one's true self to emerge. It is an exorcism and a reconsecration, and a hopeful invitation to "be this alive and this beautiful."

DAN LAU (he/they) is a Chinese American poet raised on Munsee Lenape land also known as Queens, New York. His poems have been published in Generations, Cape Cod Review, Gesture, RHINO, CRATE, Colorado Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and others. He is the former Managing Poetry Editor of Foglifter, a queer journal and press. 
A Kundiman fellow, he is the recipient of scholarships, grants, and residencies from The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Queer Cultural Center, San Francisco Arts Commission, Willapa Bay AiR, and Caldera. He received his MFA in Poetry from Boise State University and his MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Currently, he resides on Ramaytush Ohlone land and is the Individual Giving Manager at East Bay Community Law Center.