Call for 2024 Balocating Undergraduate Prize Announced

February 22, 2024

The call for entries for the Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry is now open with entries due March 8. The final judge is Gabrielle Calvocoressi and the winner will be announced on April 3 at An Evening with Laura Apol.

The Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry was established in 2011 by Annie Balocating (1979-2018), an MSU/Residential Option in Arts and Letters (ROIAL) alumna. It awards $500 to an MSU undergraduate in any major for a single poem.

To view guidelines and to enter, click here.

 

About final judge Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in  Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn't Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi was the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for 2022 - 2023. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice.