Our readers are always changing — a rotating panel of judges, representing a cross-section of the American poetry community, chooses the winners from submissions postmarked on or before July 1 each year. And a group of qualified screeners meets at CGU’s Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards offices to screen all submissions and select their top 20 books in each category to forward to the final judges. Here’s our 2026 awards year team:
2026 Director of the Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards:
Lori Anne Ferrell, Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities at Claremont Graduate University, Louis and Mildred Benezet Chair in the Humanities, and Director of Early Modern Studies Program
2026 Screening Committee:
Jeremy Ra, poet and recipient of Morton Marcus Poetry Prize
Ashley Dailey, poet and multimedia artist; PhD student at USC
Mary Fitzpatrick, poet and finalist for Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and other major poetry awards
2026 Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards Final Judges:
Donika Kelly, poet and associate professor at University of Iowa; author of Bestiary, winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Major Jackson, poet and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities at Vanderbilt University; author of Leaving Saturn; and winner of a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writers’ Award
Ed Pavlic, poet, writer, and research professor at University of Georgia; author of Live at the Bitter End, and winner of The National Poetry Series Open Competition (2012, 2014)
francine j. harris, poet and English professor at University of Houston; author of Here is the Sweet Hand, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and Kingsley Tufts finalist
Vievee Francis, poet and professor at Dartmouth University; author of Forest Primeval, winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award