Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest Winners’ Reading 2018

The Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest winners of 2018, Heidi Johannsen Poon, Jake Skeets, Monica Sok and Paul Tran read together on May, 10, 2018.

Over the decades, the contest has discovered such poets as John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Mark Strand and Mary Jo Bang. Preliminary judges were Timothy Donnelly and A. H. Jerriod Avant. Final judges were Craig Santos Perez, Srikanth Reddy and Dara Weir.

Heidi Johannesen Poon’s chapbook is The Good News of the Ground, for which she won the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship. She has received fellowships and support from Brown University; the Iowa Writer’s Workshop; the MacDowell Colony; Rona Jaffe at Bread Loaf and elsewhere.

Jake Skeets is Black Streaked Wood, born for Water’s Edge. He is Diné from the Navajo Nation and is pursuing an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His work has appeared in Word Riot, Connotation Press, The Blueshift Journal, and elsewhere.

Monica Sok’s chapbook is Year Zero, for which she won the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship. She has been awarded fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, Kundiman, the NEA, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.

Paul Tran is poetry editor at The Offing. Their work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry and elsewhere. They are the first Asian American since 1993 and the first transgender poet to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam.