The New Criterion is delighted to announce that In Transit, by Nicholas Pierce, has been selected as the winner of the 2020 New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Nicholas Pierce was born in Bakersfield, CA. He graduated from Texas Tech University and received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Florida. During his MFA, he taught creative writing and worked on the school’s literary journal, Subtropics. His own poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Hopkins Review, and Smartish Pace, among other places. A resident of Salt Lake City, he’s now working on a PhD in Poetry at the University of Utah. In Transit is his first book.
Poetry Prize winners receive $3,000 and publication of their manuscript. This year’s judges were the poet Rachel Hadas, The New Criterion Editor and Publisher Roger Kimball, and The New Criterion Poetry Editor and poet Adam Kirsch. In Transit will be available in the fall of 2021 from Criterion Books.