Cooley poetry collection wins Kinereth Gensler Award

Milk Dress, the fourth poetry collection by upstreet poet Nicole Cooley (“Hour of the Pink Flashlight,” upstreet number five) will be published in November by Alice James Books as co-winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award. This award, one of two competitions run by the publisher, is open to poets residing in New York, New Jersey, and New England. In addition to publication, winners of the award receive $2,000 and serve a three-year term on the Alice James Books Editorial Board.

“These are poems of birth and motherhood. They begin with a new life and end in a new self. They probe deep into the places where love extinguishes identity and yet renews awareness. What is so compelling here is that the arc of this journey is described with such music, craft and rigor in this wonderful collection.”—Eavan Boland

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. Her third book of poems, Breach, about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast, was published by LSU Press in April. Her first book, Resurrection, won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award and was published by LSU Press in 1996. Her second book, The Afflicted Girls, was chosen as one of the best poetry books of 2004 by Library Journal. She directs the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY, and lives outside New York City with her husband and two young daughters.

Nicole was one of the featured readers in the upstreet number five offsite reading party during the April AWP Conference in Denver.