Prize Includes All-Expenses-Paid Trip to New York City,
Meetings With Publishing Professionals
New York, NY—May 21, 2025—Poets & Writers today announced the winners of the 2025 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award are Kristine Knapp for fiction and Courtney Huse Wika for poetry.
The Writers Exchange Award provides winners with a unique opportunity for professional advancement. Poets & Writers will invite Knapp and Huse Wika to identify agents, editors, authors, and other literary professionals they wish to meet, and will then arrange appointments with as many of these individuals as possible. This fall, the winners will travel to New York City, all expenses paid, where Poets & Writers representatives will accompany them on visits to gather advice, gain insight, and establish professional contacts.
Poets and fiction writers from North and South Dakota were invited to apply for this year’s award. Novelist Kali Fajardo-Anstine judged for fiction and poet Chet’la Sebree judged for poetry.
Fajardo-Anstine said of Knapp’s winning entry: “With glimmers of humor and heartfelt humanity, this submission sings with nuance and writerly insight. From an imagined purgatory where one’s only companion is an unruly chihuahua to an awkward matinee at the local theater, these pages offer a type of escape, a form of entertainment that still manages to teach us about being human. I loved these pages and can’t wait to read more from this talented writer.”
Sebree said of Huse Wika’s work: “These selections from Pioneer Species nimbly yoke the natural world to the human one of grief, illness, and loss. These dexterous poems, attuned to their sonic and imagistic landscapes, navigate the precarity of existence, as the speaker drapes mortality-related dread in the lush beauty of flora and fauna also arcing toward survival.”
The judges also cited first runners-up Patrick Henry (fiction) and Micaela Gerhardt (poetry). Excerpts from the winning manuscripts can be found at at.pw.org/wexaward.
The Writers Exchange Award is generously supported by Maureen Mahon Egen, a member of the Poets & Writers Emeritus Board. As a direct result of receiving the award, past winners have gone on to publish books, obtain fellowships, secure teaching positions, and lay the groundwork for their professional writing careers. The award has helped to launch the careers of Sue Monk Kidd (The Invention of Wings, The Secret Life of Bees), David Mura (Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei), Craig Santos Perez (from unincorporated territory [åmot]), Mona Simpson (Case), Lidia Yuknavitch (Thrust), and others. To date, one hundred sixteen writers from forty-six states and four jurisdictions have participated in this enriching, career-shaping experience.
Kristine (Kris) Knapp is a retired U.S. diplomat and former software engineer. She loves writing quirky short stories and has been published in Oakwood. She is working on a novel which she hopes will be more entertaining—for both her and the reader!—than the technical documents and government reports she authored in the past. Originally from northeast Ohio, Kris now lives in the Black Hills region of South Dakota with her husband, who finds all the characters in her work “neurotic.” (Credit: Tim Knapp)
Courtney Huse Wika believes in the art of collection: nearly forgotten stories, bird facts, and rescue animals. A finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, longlisted for the Rising Poet and Emerging Poet prizes from Palette Poetry, and finalist for the New Millennium Writing Awards, she is also the author of Perch, a chapbook of nature poetry from Anchor and Plume Press. Her creative work has been published widely, including in North American Review, CALYX, the Halcyone, New Ohio Review, South Dakota Review, and Midwestern Gothic. She is currently a professor of English and distinguished faculty at Black Hills State University. (Credit: Jimi Marshall)
As part of the Writers Exchange Award, Knapp and Huse Wika will each be invited to participate in a one-month residency at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming.
ABOUT POETS & WRITERS
Founded in 1970, Poets & Writers has been the primary source of trustworthy information, professional guidance, support, and inspiration for writers for fifty-five years. Our work is rooted in the belief that literature is vital to sustaining a vibrant culture, and we focus on nurturing literature’s source: creative writers. Our mission is to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.
We advance this mission through our flagship publication, Poets & Writers Magazine; pw.org, a website that offers writers information, inspiration, and a lively online community; and programs that provide professional development opportunities, financial support, and validation for writers. We sponsor the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award and the Jackson Poetry Prize. Our work is guided by our core values: service, inclusivity, integrity, and excellence, and by our commitment to becoming an antiracist organization. Learn more at pw.org.
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CONTACT:
Rachel Schuder
Director of Development & Communications
Poets & Writers, Inc.
(212) 226-3586 x201
rschuder@pw.org