2026 Anne Halley Poetry Prize Winner

Congratulations to Caroline Harper New, the winner of this year’s Anne Halley Poetry Prize!

Poetry editors Nathan McClain and Abigail Chabitnoy selected New’s poem “My Love for Geography Is an Act of Mourning” from our Summer 2025 issue for the prize.

A virtual reading with New and printed broadsides featuring the poem are both forthcoming.

CAROLINE HARPER NEW is a poet and artist from southwest Georgia. She is the author of A History of Half-Birds (Milkweed Editions), winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and is now a PhD student in anthropology. Her research examines how ecological imagination is formed at the intersection of narrative-making and multispecies entanglements.