Poets & Writers Announces 2009 Amy Award Winners

Poets & Writers is pleased to announce that Genevieve Burger-Weiser, Lisabeth Burton, K.D. Henley, and Alexandra Wilder are the winners of the 2009 Amy Award. The four winners will read their work at a public reading at 6 p.m. on October 21 at New York Society Library, located at 53 East 79th St. in Manhattan.

Genevieve Burger-Weiser is about to receive an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. She was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s 2009 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a semi-finalist for the 2009 “Discovery”/Boston Review poetry contest, and shortlisted for the 2009 Times Literary Supplement poetry prize. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from CRATE, Juked, Washington Square Review, and Western Humanities Review. She recently taught a poetry workshop in the Columbia University summer writing program.

Lisabeth Burton received her MFA from Columbia University and BA from the University of Virginia. She works at W.W. Norton & Co. and edits PoemsOutLoud.net. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Broome Review, Denver Quarterly, Inkwell, and The North American Review. She is the 2009 recipient of the Stephen Dunn Prize in poetry.

K.D. Henley received her MFA from Columbia University in 2007 and currently works for a literary nonprofit organization in New York City. She has acted as poetry editor for the literary journals Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art and Small Spirals Notebook. Her poems have appeared in several journals, including Washington Square, and are forthcoming in Rattapallax. She was a finalist for a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 2008.

Alexandra Wilder is the Managing Director of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in Conjunctions online, Interim, Memorious, Tin House, and Moosehead Anthology X: Future Welcome, published by DC Books.

The Amy Award is presented to women poets age 30 and under living in the New York City metropolitan area or on Long Island. Winners receive an honorarium and a reading in New York City. The award was established in 1995 by Paula Trachtman and Edward Butscher of East Hampton, New York in memory of Ms. Trachtman’s daughter, Amy Rothholz, an actor and poet.