2025 Nature Poetry Prize: Winners & Finalists
We are delighted to share the winners, finalists, and longlist for the 2025 Nature Poetry Prize! Please join us in congratulating these brilliant poets. Deep gratitude to all who shared moving poems with us—we are so lucky to have been immersed in the worlds of your work. The winning poem and runner-ups were selected by guest judge Aimee Nezhukumatathil and are published on the Palette website.
Winners of the 2025 Nature Poetry Prize
1st place — Jacqueline Lyons for “Fire Season: Super Perennial”
Jacqueline Lyons is the author of poetry collections Adorable Airport (Barrow Street Press), The Way They Say Yes Here (Hanging Loose Press), and poetry chapbooks Earthquake Daily (New Michigan Press), and Lost Colony (Dancing Girl Press). Her nonfiction has been cited in Best American Essays, and her essay collection, Breakdown of Poses, was named finalist for an AWP Award Series Prize in Nonfiction. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, a Peace Corps Writers Best Poetry Book Award, Utah Arts Council Awards in poetry and nonfiction, and a Nevada Arts Council Fellowship in nonfiction. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at California Lutheran University, and lives on the southern segment of the San Andreas Fault.
2nd place — Lisa Compo for “False Aubade”
Lisa Compo has forthcoming or recently published poems in journals such as: Waxwing, DIALOGIST, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She is a PhD student in SUNY Binghamton’s creative writing program and obtained her MFA from UNC – Greensboro. She has received several nominations for the Pushcart award and Best of the Net. She is the social media manager for The Shore.
3rd place — Sylvia Fox for “Texas, May 1999”
Sylvia Fox is a multi-genre Brazilian-American writer. Her work moves between the mythic and the everyday, echoing with folklore and mysticism, the weight of memory, and the ways grief lingers in the body. Sylvia was born in Oregon and moved to Texas as a child, and movement across landscapes has always been an important part of her personal mythology. She grew up listening to family stories in Portuguese and English, stories of crossings and hauntings, of the past slipping through the cracks of the present. Her work speaks to that inheritance. Sylvia holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. Her debut novella-in-verse, Little Fish, was published by Blue Cactus Press in April 2025. Her work has appeared in stadtsprachen magazin, The Acentos Review, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere.
Finalists
Michelle Castleberry
Kat Couch
Maura High
Lea Marshall
Michael Mlekoday
Elizabeth Pérez
Razraseny
Longlist
Conal Abatangelo
Amelia Badri
Bazeed
Allison Field Bell
Jeremy Caldwell
Elyssa Cook
Stacey Forbes
Catherine Jade Grandorff
Caleb Johnson
Angela Just
S.A. Leger
Christopher McCormick
Jed Myers
Ciara Orness
Anne Reeves
Katrina Serwe
Martin Settle
Ann Taylor
Samuel Ugbechie