Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield’s book “Battle Dress” (W. W. Norton, 2019) won the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book “Frost in the Low Areas” (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press and is a Massachusetts “Must Read” selection. She is the poet laureate for Northampton, Massachusetts, for 2019-2021. Skolfield is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in poetry from The Missouri Review, the 2015 Robert H. Winner award from the Poetry Society of America, and the 2015 Arts & Humanities Award from New England Public Radio. She’s received fellowships and awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Split This Rock, Ucross Foundation, Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.