Catamaran Poetry Prize Celebration

Join us for a celebration of the winner of the Catamaran Poetry Prize for 2019, featuring poet Susan Browne reading from her winning collection, Just Living.

"The entry anonymously chosen for the Catamaran Poetry Prize, Susan Browne’s Just Living, is an extraordinary collection of poems. I didn’t want this book to end. I wanted to keep reading these amazing poems that fuse outrageous humor with a stiletto-sharp pathos. Susan Browne’s poems send a message of great hope that people can keep going despite every adversity, personal, political, and planetary." —Zack Rogow, judge

Statement on this year’s Catamaran Poetry Prize:

The manuscripts submitted for the 2019 Catamaran Poetry Prize were exceptionally strong. It was difficult to narrow the pool to five finalists, and challenging to pick just one winner from the top entries, since all of the finalists are publishable manuscripts. In recognition of the strength of this year’s entries, we are naming not only a winner and four finalists, but three semifinalists as well, since those deserving entries would not otherwise be acknowledged. The vitality and variety of the entries is testimony to the dynamic poetry community on the West Coast of the United States. Many thanks to all the poets who entered this year’s contest.

Read more about this year's winner and finalists on the Catamaran website.