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Results of the 2026 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York


AUGUST 7, 2026    |    CONTEST RESULTS





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The editors of Southern Humanities Review are proud to announce the results of our thirteenth annual poetry contest honoring the late Jake Adam York, award-winning poet and alumnus of Auburn University’s creative writing program. This year’s final judge—celebrated poet A. Van Jordan—selected our winner. The winner, runner-up, and finalists will appear together in Volume 59.3, which will be published in the Fall of 2026.

The poems and poets honored this year are preceded by an outstanding collection of work from our 2014 - 2025 Auburn Witness Poetry Prizes. Learn more about Jake Adam York, our prize, and past winners here.


WINNER

Jed Myers

for his poem “Spring”

Jed Myers is the author of four books of poetry—his most recent, Can’t Be Far (MoonPath Press, 2026), was a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award. His prior collections are Learning to Hold (2024, winner of the Wandering Aengus Press Editors’ Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press, 2019), Watching the Perseids (2014, winner of the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), and six chapbooks. Recent honors include prizes from Columbia Journal, Common Ground Review, and the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. His poems have appeared in Rattle, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, Southeast Review, The Greensboro Review, and other journals and anthologies. Myers lives in Seattle, where he’s Editor of the journal Bracken.

OUR WINNER RECEIVES $1,000 AND WILL PARTICIPATE IN A READING PRESENTED BY THE JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART AT AUBURN UNIVERSITY THIS OCTOBER TO READ HIS POETRY ALONGSIDE CONTEST JUDGE A. VAN JORDAN.



RUNNER-UP

Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé    “The Body That Walks Out of Fire Is Something Else”


FINALISTS

Vinita Agrawal   “Language of the Indigenous Man”
Todd Davis   “Clearcut”
Leila Farjami   “Days of Ceasefire, a Double Sonnet”
Aiden Heung   “Himalayan Blackberry”
Leila Abeni Jackson   “Show, Boat”
Damneet Kaur   “After Reading About the Experiments Near Rawalpindi”
Holly G. Thompson   “Commute”
Felicia Zamora   “F_el_ Note: Ecological Love Story”


OUR RUNNER-UP AND FINALISTS WILL HAVE THEIR WORK PUBLISHED IN ISSUE 59.3 ALONGSIDE THE CONTEST'S WINNER.


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