Michelle Boisseau’s “Among the Gorgons” Best in 2015

Michelle Boisseau, Professor of English in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, has been named winner of the 2015 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry.

Boisseau received the annual prize for her new manuscript, “Among the Gorgons.” In addition to a $2,000 prize, Boisseau’s book will be published in 2016 by the University of Tampa Press.

The Tampa Review Prize for Poetry is given annually for a previously unpublished book-length manuscript. Judges are faculty members at the University of Tampa. They chose Boisseau’s poems for their “graceful and unexpected leaps from personal to mythic, tender to satiric, and tragic to comic.”

Boisseau said that she nearly missed the contest deadline with her manuscript.

“I sent my manuscript at the last minute. We got home on December 31st after visiting friends and family at Christmas,” Boisseau said. “Before we left for a New Year’s dinner, I took a few minutes to get ‘Among the Gorgons’ submitted. I pushed myself to take the chance, and what a fabulous result.”

Boisseau’s previous books of poetry include “Trembling Air,” a PEN USA finalist; and “Understory,” which received the Morse Prize. She also has been twice awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. Boisseau is Senior Editor of BkMk Press and Contributing Editor of “New Letters.” Her university textbook, “Writing Poems” (Longman), is now in its eighth edition.