Established in memory of poet and editor Ron Offen, the Ron Offen Poetry Prize brings one Chicago poet to campus each year for a public reading. The prize also accommodates one student reader, to be chosen by the visiting poet from anonymous submissions.
The 2019-20 Offen Poetry Prize judge is Jennifer Nelson.
JENNIFER NELSON’s first book of poems, Aim at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife, came out with Ugly Duckling Presse in Dec. 2015. The second, Civilization Makes Me Lonely, was chosen by Anne Boyer for the Sawtooth Prize and will appear from Ahsahta Press in the spring of 2017. Nelson’s other work has appeared recently in BathHouse, LIT, Wreck Park, and elsewhere. She was an Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.