The Millay Society’s 2025Student Poetry Contest Winners to be Honored at Steepletop on June 14

To celebrate the centennial of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s purchase of Steepletop—her home and writing retreat in Austerlitz, New York—The Millay Society is sponsoring a poetry contest for students in the region. Winners of the poetry contest will receive cash prizes, as well as an opportunity to present their poetry to the public and to participate in a private tour of the Steepletop property and Millay’s home.

All students aged 13-18, residing in Columbia County in New York or Berkshire County in Massachusetts, enrolled in public, independent, and religion-affiliated schools, as well as home-schooled students, are eligible to participate. There is no entry fee.

Poems will be submitted and judged in three categories; first, second, and third prizes will be awarded to students in each of the following age ranges:

Ages 13 & 14
Ages 15 & 16
Ages 17 & 18

Judges will award a first, second, and third prize in each of the three categories. The nine winners will be invited to present their poetry to the public, and to participate in a private tour of Millay’s home and the Steepletop property.

First Prize -- $500

Second Price -- $250

Third Prize -- $100

All participants entering the contest will receive a certificate of participation.

Submit Your Entry

Poetry Contest Details

Students must enter in the category that corresponds with their age on April 1, 2025.
Students are only permitted to submit one (1) poem. Submitting multiple poems will result in disqualification.
Poems must be entirely original work created by the student entering the contest. Poems containing plagiarism, generated by artificial intelligence, or written with the help of others, will be disqualified.
Poems must be submitted in English, although inclusion of occasional words or phrases in a foreign language is permitted.
The Millay Society suggests that participants consider submitting a poem that reflects one of the major themes of Millay’s poetry–nature, feminism, emotions and relationships, social and political injustice—but this is not a requirement.
Poems must be no less than 8 lines. The poem’s title does not count as a line of the poem. Stanza breaks also do not count as a line of the poem. Any submission that does not meet these length requirements will be disqualified.
If, in the judges’ unanimous opinion, a poem is determined to include language that is vulgar, offensive, or hateful, the poem will be disqualified.
Students should use the “Enter” key to start a new line, indicating all intentional line breaks.
If the poem has been submitted to another competition or publication, students should include this information on the cover page.
All poems remain the property of the author.

The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was a widely celebrated poet during her lifetime and a major influence on our nation’s cultural life during the post-World War I era. No poet in her generation was as adored, or as widely read and quoted, as Edna St. Vincent Millay. The English author Thomas Hardy proclaimed that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

In her poetry, Millay used classic poetic forms to introduce bold new themes of women’s equality and freedom to make their own choices, as well as themes of social and political injustice. In 1923, The New York Times named Millay “America’s poet of the future.” Throughout her life Millay published ten books of poetry, an opera libretto, songs, plays, essays, short stories, and satirical sketches.

Desiring a quieter life than bustling New York City could provide, Millay answered a March 1925 New York Times advertisement for an abandoned berry farm on a hilltop in Austerlitz, New York, a few hours’ drive north of Manhattan. She and her husband Eugen Boissevain, bought the property in May 1925 and, over the next several years, transformed it into an elegant country estate, as well as a working farm, with flower, herb, and vegetable gardens; guest houses; a tennis court overlooking the Taconic Range, and a sunken garden with a spring-fed swimming pool. She claimed a small outbuilding in a blueberry field as her writing cabin. Steepletop became Millay’s sanctuary, where she composed and assembled many of her poetry collections and entertained family members and friends. She lived on the property until her death in October 1950.

Submit Your Entry

Poetry Contest Details

The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society is pleased to announce the winners of its first Regional Student Poetry Contest. Open to students aged 13-18, living in Columbia and Berkshire counties, the contest awards first-, second-, and third-place prizes in each of three categories: 13-14 years, 15-16 years, and 17-18 years. The response to the contest was overwhelming and we received outstanding works of poetry from young people across the two counties in all age groups.

Three professional poets, Molly McGlennen of Vassar College, Rebecca Morgan Frank of Lewis University, and Cydney Hope Brown, 2023 Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate, judged the submissions on a variety of criteria. “With the proliferation of AI, we considered authentic voice and creativity as one of the primary rubrics for our decisions,” notes Frank.

Awards will be presented on the first day of the Centennial Celebration of Steepletop, June 14 at 1 pm, at Steepletop.

Winners of the 2025 Edna St. Vincent Millay Regional Student Poetry Contest

13 - 14 Years

First Place: Rachel Phillips
Lee, MA

Second Place: Carter Gilb
Pittsfield, MA

Third Place: Kavya Culbreth
Great Barrington, MA

15 - 16 Years

First Place: Olive Klinedinst
Dalton, MA

Second Place: Noah Wesley
Dalton, MA

Third Place: Sophie O'Brien
Pittsfield, MA

17 - 18 Years

First Place: Ava Young
Southfield, MA

Second Place: Lyla Forest Butler
Copake, NY

Third Place: Larissa McMann
East Chatham, NY

The Judges

Cydney Hope Brown is the 2023 Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate and Emerita Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate. She is an award-winning poet, author of Daydreaming, and producer of the spoken word album Roundtrip. She is a student at Northwestern University and has been featured in The New York Times. She has recited poetry at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Hall, Lincoln University, and The Barnes Foundation. Her poetry explores the topics of social justice, love, and nature. Cydney wishes to inspire people to speak their truth and to share her poetry with the world.

Rebecca Morgan Frank is the author of four collections of poems, including Oh You Robot Saints! (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2021), and Little Murders Everywhere (Salmon Poetry), a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poetry and criticism have appeared widely, including in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, and The Kenyon Review, and her collaborations with composers are performed across the United States. She serves on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle and is an Assistant Professor at Lewis University.

Molly McGlennen, professor of English and Native American Studies and the Anne McNiff Tatlock ’61 chair in Multidisciplinary Studies at Vassar College, is of Anishinaabe and European descent. She is the author of two poetry collections: Fried Fish and Flour Biscuits (Salt’s Earthworks Series of Indigenous Writers) and Our Bearing (University of Arizona Sun Tracks). Her poems appear in Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poets.org (Poems-a-Day), Red Ink, Great Lakes Review, Yellow Medicine Review, and Sentence. McGlennen also authored a critical monograph Creative Alliances: The Transnational Designs of Indigenous Women’s Poetry (University of Oklahoma Press), which earned the Beatrice Medicine Award for outstanding scholarship in American Indian Literature, and co-edited the collection, Indigenous Poetics (Michigan State University Press American Indian Studies).