Honoring extraordinary young poets with more than $145,000 in prizes
CHICAGO, Aug. 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Poetry Foundation is thrilled to announce the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows: Xochi Quetzali Cartland, Fatima Jafar, Noel Munguia-Moreno, Shaina Phenix, and Tariq Thompson.
Among the largest awards offered to young poets in the United States, the Fellowship program recognizes and provides monetary support to five exceptional poets who are between ages 21 and 31 years. Each fellow receives $27,000, a subscription to Poetry magazine, and an invitation to submit work to the venerated publication. Additionally, the Poetry Foundation will sponsor the fellows’ attendance at the 2026 Dodge Poetry Festival, where they will participate in their inaugural reading as a cohort.
“We’re delighted to recognize five exceptional young poets as recipients of the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships,” said Poetry editor-in-chief, Adrian Matejka. “These emerging writers are special, not only for the strength of their voices but also for their sustained commitment to their communities. At this time when both poetry and civic engagement are especially vital, their work exemplifies the power of poetry to inspire and connect. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to this year’s fellows and finalists.”
Introducing the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows
Xochi Quetzali Cartland (she/her) is a queer Chicana poet and seamstress from the DMV. She holds a BA from Brown University in Literary Arts, was a finalist for the ONLY POEMS 2024 Poet of the Year Award, and was the runner-up for the 2026 The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Starting in the fall of 2026, she is a MFA student in poetry at Johns Hopkins University.
Fatima Jafar (she/her) is a writer from Karachi, Pakistan. She was a 2024–2026 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and completed her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in 2023. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry 2025, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Oxford Poetry, and other publications. She is an assistant teaching professor in creative writing at Georgetown University
Noel Munguia-Moreno (he/him) is a poet and educator from West Valley City, Utah, and the son of Mexican migrants. He earned a BA from Susquehanna University and a MFA from Rutgers University–Newark, where he taught creative writing. His writing has been supported by the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has appeared in MudRoom Magazine, Decolonial Passage, and other publications.
Shaina Phenix (she/her) is a Black, queer poet, essayist, and educator from Harlem, New York. She is the author of To Be Named Something Else, the winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize from University of Arkansas Press. She is an assistant professor of English at Elon University. Her work has appeared in The Pinch Journal, Puerto del Sol, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, CRAFT Magazine, The Georgia Review, and Gulf Coast Journal.
Tariq Thompson (he/they) is a poet and an educator from Memphis, Tennessee, and author of the chapbook LONE LILY (Sunset Press, 2021). Their poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, Split Lip Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Thompson’s honors include a 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry. Thompson holds a BA in English from Kenyon College and an MFA in poetry from New York University, where he was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow.
The Poetry Foundation also congratulates the 2026 fellowship finalists, who each receive $2,000 in professional development funds to use for an opportunity of their choosing:
2026 Decision Process
Each application to the 2026 fellowships was read by one of 12 external reviewers in the first round. Then, a panel of an additional three external reviewers read all the top-scoring applications to select 10 finalists and subsequently, the five fellows.
The Poetry Foundation would like to thank the following readers and reviewers for their time and careful consideration:
- Diana Arterian
- Diego Báez
- Christiana Castillo
- Ama Codjoe
- Imani Elizabeth Jackson
- Dr. Manny Loley
- Dr. Nick Makoha
- Olga Maslova
- Briana Pickens
- Jake Skeets
- Yuki Tanaka
- Lindsay Turner
- Jezmina Von Thiele
- Mia You
- Anonymous reviewer
Applications for the 2027 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships will be open January 15 through March 1, 2027. Questions and comments about the fellowships can be directed to Grants@PoetryFoundation.org.
About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation transforms lives through the power of words. Our work aims to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. Follow the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
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