Poetry Foundation Announces the 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows

CHICAGO, August 13, 2025—The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce the 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows: Jada Renée Allen, DeeSoul Carson, Andres Cordoba, Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe, and Aris Kian. 

The fellowships are part of the Poetry Foundation’s mission to amplify poetry and celebrate poets, providing outstanding young poets with recognition of their current contributions to the field, along with monetary support to use as they see fit in the development of their craft. Established in 1989, the prize of $27,000 per fellow is among the largest awards available to young poets in the United States. 

Each fellow receives a subscription to Poetry magazine and an invitation to submit work to the renowned publication. Additionally, the Poetry Foundation will sponsor attendance at the O, Miami Poetry Festival, where the fellows will participate in their inaugural reading as a cohort. 

“We are thrilled to honor these five gifted poets with Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships,” said Poetry editor, Adrian Matejka. “Each of these young writers is exemplary for both their creative and social practices. They are writing important poems even as they support their local communities at a moment when we need art and activism desperately. Wholehearted congratulations to this year’s fellows and finalists.” 

Introducing the 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows

Jada Renée Allen (she/her) is a writer, educator, and culture worker from South Side Chicago, Illinois. She is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships, and support from Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Community of Writers, The Frost Place, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and VONA, among other organizations. Allen’s writing appears in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Callaloo, Chicago Reader, Gulf Coast, Logic(s) Magazine, wildness, and other publications. Allen is the founding executive director of the Frances Thompson Arts Foundation and editor-in-chief of Bodemé.

DeeSoul Carson (he/him) is a poet and educator from San Diego, California. Carson’s work has been published in Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, The Offing, and other publications. His 2020 chapbook, Running from Streetlights, is a meditation on Blackness in America during the “Summer of Racial Reckoning.” A Stanford alum, Carson earned his MFA from New York University, where he received a fellowship. He also received fellowships from The Watering Hole and the National Endowment for the Arts. Carson lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Andres Cordoba (he/him) is a Massachusetts-born writer. In 2019, he received the Thayer Fellowship, Patricia Kerr Ross Award, and was named a Breakout 8 Writer by Epiphany Literary Journal. He was a finalist for Black Warrior Review’s 2020 Poetry Contest. He has received support from Brooklyn Poets and was a Periplus Mentorship fellow. His work can be found in The Harvard Review, The Gandy Dancer, and Epiphany. He earned a BA from SUNY Purchase and MFA in poetry from Brown University, where he won the 2024 John Hawkes Prize, 2024 Edwin Honig Memorial Award, and 2025 Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop Prize. He lives in New York, where he is the co-poetry editor for Big Score Lit and an MFA candidate in fiction at New York University.

Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe (she/her) is a Nigerian poet. She received her BA in English and Literary Studies from the University of Calabar and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was awarded the 2025 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, 2024 American Literary Review Poetry Prize, and 2020 Bloomsday Poetry Prize. Her works have appeared in Indiana Review, American Literary Review, Chestnut Review, Brittle Paper, and other publications. She is also a Best of the Net nominee and currently the Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellow (HEAF) at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing.

Aris Kian (she/her) is a Houston-born and -based writer, poet, spoken word artist, and student of abolition and grassroots organizing. Her poems have been published in West Branch, Obsidian Lit, The West Review, and other journals. As an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, she received her MFA from the University of Houston and received the 2022 Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. Kian is a part of the 2023 BIPOC Artist and Network Fund cohort and is a 2023–2024 Creative Catalyst Fellow collaborating alongside Sonny Mehta. She served as the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate. 

The Poetry Foundation also congratulates the 2025 fellowship finalists, who each receive $2,000 in professional development funds to use for an opportunity of their choosing:

• Sarah Ghazal Ali
• Sasha Burshteyn
• Derek Chan
• Carlina Duan
• Harrison Hamm
• Andrew Chi Keong Yim

2025 Decision Process

Each application to the 2025 fellowships was read by one of 13 external reviewers in the first round. Then, a panel of an additional three external reviewers read all the top-scoring applications to select 11 finalists and subsequently, the five fellows.

The Poetry Foundation would like to thank the following readers and reviewers for their time and careful consideration:

• Jessica Abughattas
• Diego Báez
• Jos Charles 
• Chen Chen 
• Su Cho 
• Laura Da’
• Omotara James
• Maya Marshall 
• Yesenia Montilla
• Tarnynon Onumonu
• Laura Paul
• Natalie Perman
• C. Russell Price
• Edward Salem
• Madeleine Wattenberg
• One anonymous reader

Applications for the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships will be open January 15 through March 2, 2026. Questions and comments about the fellowships can be directed to Grants@PoetryFoundation.org.

#

About the Poetry Foundation

The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. The Foundation works to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. Follow the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Media Contact 

Liz O’Connell-Thompson, Media Manager, eoconnellthompson@poetryfoundation.org