2009 Winners

The four prize-winning pieces, selected from a pool of close to 500 entries, represent Times Square experiences and impressions as disparate and diverse as their authors – from a family of sparrows nesting in an unlikely urban environment to a meditation on intimacy and estrangement inspired by the famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square at the end of World War II.

The 2009 contest was judged by the PSA.

THE WINNERS:

Download the winning poems (PDF)

Mary Jo Bang (St. Louis, MO)
"In a Square of Times Square"

Mary Jo Bang's fifth collection of poems, Elegy, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her sixth collection, The Bride of E, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press this month. She teaches in the writing program at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jehanne Dubrow (Chestertown, MD)
"VJ Day in Times Square"
Jehanne Dubrow's work has appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Hudson Review. She is the author of a poetr y collection, The Hardship Post (Three Candles Press 2009). Two new books are forthcoming within the next year, From the Fever-World (Washington Writers Publishing House) and Stateside (Northwestern University Press).

Ben Miller (New York, NY)
"Pipe Birds"

Ben Miller has lived and worked in New York City since 1986, when he arrived from eastern Iowa, where he grew up and attended college. His writing has appeared in many venues, including Best American Essays, The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, Salmagundi, Raritan, AGNI, One Story and An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions, 2009). He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Henk Rossouw (Amherst, MA)
"Chez Times Square"

Originally from South Africa, Henk Rossouw lives in Amherst, where he's in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Tin House, The Threepenny Review, and online in the Virginia Quarterly Review.