Wladyslaw Cieszynski English Fellowship for Verse

The Wlaydslaw Cieszynski English Fellowship is given to an outstanding graduate student in the Department of English. Eligible students must be working on their master’s or PhD in the creative writing track in the Department of English. Eligible students will also have a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA and be heading into their last year of study (graduating by August of 2025). This contest is for previously published work: one poem of no more than two pages. Online and print publications are both acceptable. Submit a PDF copy of the journal cover or web site’s front page, table of contents when one exists, and the published piece itself with the author’s name blacked out wherever it appears.

Applications are typically accepted in mid-Spring each year.

Eligible students will be entering their last year of study in the 2025-26 academic year (e.g. graduating by August 2026) and have a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA. This contest is for previously published work: one poem of no more than two pages. Online and print publications are both acceptable. Submit a PDF copy of the journal cover or web site’s front page, table of contents when one exists, and the published piece itself with the author’s name blacked out wherever it appears.

Poetry Judge:
Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her poetry and prose appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University MFA program, she has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Rolex Foundation, W.S. Merwin Conservancy, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation and U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Award. Her debut poetry collection, Grand Tour, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, was named one of the best books of 2023 by The New Yorker. It also received the 2024 Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the 2025 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. FSG will also bring out her novel, The Awakenings, and a nonfiction book, Strangers on Earth.