Congratulations to the Winners of the 2026 National Poetry Series Open Competition! Posted in: News
From left: Mary Margaret Alvarado, ethan s. evans, Lex Orgera, Margaret Ray, and Christell Victoria Roach
The National Poetry Series congratulates the five winners of the 2026 National Poetry Series Open Competition:
RAMBOW by Mary Margaret Alvarado
Selected by Jos Charles for Beacon Press
collapse by ethan s. evans
Selected by Donna Stonecipher for University of Georgia Press
A Partial List of Sorrows by Lex Orgera
Selected by Ama Codjoe for Milkweed Editions
Practical Effects by Margaret Ray
Selected by Chen Chen for Penguin
Overtown Crown by Christell Victoria Roach
Selected by Matthew Shenoda for Akashic Books
About the Poets
Mary Margaret Alvarado is the author of RAMBOW, winner of the 2026 National Poetry Series, selected by Jos Charles; American Weather; Chrome of Iris; and Hey Folly. Mia’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in The Atavist, The Baffler, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Outside, VQR, The Boston Review, and elsewhere. She is the nonfiction editor at Image. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and Provost’s Post-Graduate Writing Fellow. A mother and artist, Mia leads a small nonprofit, Brave Irene’s, and teaches in the Colorado Department of Corrections.
ethan s. evans is a writer and photographer. Currently a Health Humanities Fellow through the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics (UVA School of Medicine) and Virginia Humanities, ethan’s work has appeared in places like ONLY POEMS, The Kenyon Review, and terrain.org. ethan comes from a background in tallgrass prairie restoration. (ethansevans.com)
Lex Orgera is the author of, most recently, a collection of poems, Agatha (JackLeg Press, 2025), and a memoir, Head Case (Kore Press, 2021). A book about herbs, A Melancholy Herbal, is forthcoming in 2027. Orgera’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines including Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, West Branch, and Verse Daily. Orgera has been the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and a fellowship at the Hermitage Artists Retreat, is a contributing editor at JackLeg Press, and serves on the board of Fonograf Editions. She lives, writes, and edits books in North Carolina.
Margaret Ray is the author of Good Grief, the Ground (BOA Editions, 2023, winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award) and the chapbook Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic (Poetry Society of America, 2022). Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She grew up in Gainesville, Florida and holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Christell Victoria Roach is an Emmy-nominated poet and performer from Miami. As a descendant of its Black pioneers, she writes about the Blues, the Caribbean diaspora, and many different types of love—embracing the Southern Gothic and the tropics. She was a 2022–2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a 2025–2026 YoungArts Fellow with the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Christell is pursuing her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at Florida State University. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami after graduating from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and African American Studies. Her recent work has been published in Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Academy of American Poets, Obsidian Literary Journal, Scalawag, The Miami Rail, and elsewhere. She essays, archives, and builds memory maps across the South through OTOWN, her digital archive and interactive app showcasing communal histories in historic spaces.
Finalists
P Hodges Adams, NOT, NOT
Sara Akant, The Kingdom Book of Perihan
Luci Arbus-Scandiffio, Like What
Megan J. Arlett, Louisiana Saturday Nights
Jacob Benavides, Ibid.
Donald Berger, God’s Bedroom
Ronda Broatch, We Rough Wind
Samuel Cheney, BELIEVERS
Alex Chertok, Please Leave Your Name
Julie Choffel, Loop Hole
Darin Ciccotelli, Progressland
Jackie Clark, Body of Work
Andrew Collard, Skin / Routes
Hildred Crill, A Name Like Wollstonecraft
Sarah Crossland, Impostress and The Winter Palace
Lauren Davis, The Confessions
Noah Davis, All We Can Fit in Our Throats
Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton, Extinct: Volume One
Caitlin Doyle, The Winding Key
Ashley Escobar, Double Decker
Gabriella Fee, I Said Stay
Tin Fogdall, Single Wire Earth Return
Valentine Freeman, Public Affection
Heather June Gibbons, A Door in a Wall That Looks Like Sky
Heather Gluck and Nina Reljić, Every Day a Party After
Jason Gordon, Death Metal Yoga
David Gorin, A Pale Green Star
Andrew Hemmert, Love Is a Kingdom of Obsidian
Michael Hettich, Acapella
Michael Homolka, Twenty Maxims
Lucas Jorgensen, The Bureau of Yes
Brian Kim, SARX
Whitney Koo, Cry Sower
Kathryn Kuhlmann, Woman Masturbates on Page 1
Susan Lasher, Consent
Johanna Magin, Against Reason
Michael Marberry, LINEAGE
Nicholas Montemarano, Plague Songs
Jarrett Moseley, As If I’d Never Been Destroyed
Miguel Murphy, Incantations for an Illness
Jason Myers, Everlasting
Greg Nicholl, Another Word For
JoAnna Novak, High Place Phenomenon
Mollie O’Leary, Touchstruck
Guion Pratt, To Such a Cloud Is Pure of Its Kind
Ty Raso, Light Pretending to Be Light
Sahar Romani, Almost Not Yet
Brandon Rushton, Pastel Colors of Coastal Motels
Max Seifert, Men’s Room
Carlos Sirah, Bethlehem
Sara Slingerland Sheiner, The Shroud
Sarah Smith, Jaw Remover
FM Stringer, A Dog Day in Toontown
Daniel Summerhill, Praying for Rain
Tola Sylvan, Quiver of Ways to Be
Alison Thumel, Long Distance Relationship
Kyle Wang, Dead dog under the radiator
Jeff Whitney, Other Things I Can’t Remember
Jordan Windholz, What Remains Remains Remains
Greg Wrenn, Starry Clay
JinJin Xu, Against This Earth, We Knock
Mark Yakich, Caregiven
Joshua Young, Even the Trees
Andrew Zawacki, Noise for a Landscape: An Afterpastoral