THE ANNE HALLEY PRIZE

HISTORY AND INFORMATION

Anne Halley was for twenty-five years Poetry Editor of MR, had a long association with the English Department, and was author of three distinctive volumes of verse and many prize-winning stories, while enjoying a long career as a beloved teacher in the U.S. and abroad. 

The Anne Halley Poetry Prize is co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Review and the English Department of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. A Prize of $500 is awarded annually for the best poem to appear in the preceding year of MR, as chosen by two editors and a member of the English Department. The prize poet is invited to give a spring reading in Amherst.

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The 2011 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize is
Joanne Dominique Dwyer for her poem Bull's-eye
Volume 51, Issue 2

Joanne Dominique Dwyer was born and raised in
New York State, but has lived in New Mexico for
most of her adult life where she studied and practiced
Acupuncture for a number of years before working in
a family construction business while raising her two
children. Dwyer began writing poetry and fiction
through a community college class, which led for a
brief time to participation and involvement in spoken word venues such as the Taos Poetry Circus and other
collaborative ventures with visual artists and musicians.
She earned an undergraduate degree in Creative
Writing and Literature at the College of Santa Fe in
2005. Dwyer continued her study of poetry by
obtaining an MFA from Warren Wilson’s Program for
Writers in January, 2009.

Dwyer is a 2008 Rona Jaffe Award recipient for emerging
women writers and a recent Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
scholar. She has studied with several talented writers including
Dana Levin, Dean Young, and Tony Hoagland. Her poems have
been published in American Poetry Review, Conduit, the
Cortland Reiview, FIELD, Many Mountains Moving, the
Massachusetts Review, the New England Review and TriQuarterly.
Her first book of poems titled Harem has been completed and
a second book of poems is underway.

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The 2010 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize is
Donald Morril for his poem Enemy Infant
Volume 50, Issue 3

Donald Morrill is the author of two volumes of poetry,
At the Bottom of the Sky and With Your Back to Half
the Day, as well as four books of nonfiction: The
Untouched Minutes (winner of the River Teeth Nonfiction
Prize), Sounding for Cool, A Stranger’s Neighborhood,
and, most recently, Impetuous Sleeper. His work has
appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and his
honors include the Mid-List Press First Series Award,
the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Award, the Emerging
Writers of Creative Nonfiction Award from Duquesne
University Press, and The Missouri Review Editors’ Prize
for Nonfiction.

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The 2009 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize is
Marilyn Hacker for her poems Ghazal: min al-hobbi
ma khatal, and Ghazal: dar al-harb
Volume 49, Issue 1&2

Marilyn Hacker is the author of eleven books of poems,
most recently Essays on Departure: New and Selected
Poems (Carcanet Press, UK, 2006) and Desesperanto
(Norton, 2003). Recent translations include Guy
Goffette’s Charlestown Blues (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and Vénus Khoury-Ghata’s Nettles
(Graywolf, 2008). She lives in New York and Paris.

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The 2008 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize is
Ralph Black for 21st Century Lecture
Volume 48, Issue 3

Ralph Black's poems have appeared in the Carolina
Quarterly and the Georgia and Gettysburg Reviews,
among other journals. His first book, Turning Over
the Earth, was published by Milkweed Editions. He
teaches at SUNY Brockport, where he is Co-director
of the Brockport Writers Forum.