Kathryn CowlesKathryn Cowles's third book of poems, The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor, won the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize and was published by Fence Books in January of 2026. Poems from this book won the Poetry Society of America's Alice ay di Castagnola Manuscript-in-Progress Award, and collages from it were collected together in Feminine Monstrous, a solo art exhibition. Other books include Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World (Milkweed Editions) and Eleanor, Eleanor, not your real name (Bear Star), which won the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize.
Her poems and poem-photographs have been published in Best American Experimental Writing, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Diagram, Free Verse, Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, New American Writing, Verse, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. She earned her doctorate from the University of Utah and is an associate professor of English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where she directs (rotating) the Trias Residency for Writers and co-edits the Beyond Category section of Seneca Review. Read More Read Less