2015 Clayton Prize Awarded to Katie Hartsock

Katie Hartsock has won the 2015 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets, which is awarded annually to the best poet appearing in MQR who has not yet published a book. The award, which is determined by the MQR editors, is in the amount of $500.

MQR Poetry Editor Keith Taylor writes about her poem “The Sister Karamazov,” which appeared in our Spring 2015 issue:

We were very impressed by this poet’s ability to enter one of the classics and to reimagine it, adding another emotional and metaphoric level to something that a lesser imagination might see as fixed and impenetrable.

The Page Davidson Clayton Prize was established in 2009 by a generous gift from Meg and Mac Clayton in honor of Mac Clayton’s mother and in support of poetry and the development of new poets.

Katie Hartsock’s first collection of poems, Bed of Impatiens, has just recently been accepted for publication and will be forthcoming this year from Able Muse Press. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, Hotels, Motels, and Extended Stays (Toadlily Press, 2014). Her poems have recently appeared in Arion, Massachusetts Review, Crab Orchard Review, Midwestern Gothic, and Passages North. Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, she holds a MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University. She currently lives in Chicago and teaches introductory poetry classes at Northwestern.

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