Bobby Elliott (MFA '19) Wins the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize

Pittsburgh, PA — Bobby Elliott of Portland, Oregon, is the winner of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for his collection, The Same Man, selected by poet Nate Marshall. The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish The Same Man as part of the acclaimed Pitt Poetry Series on September 9, 2025.
“Winning the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize is a dream come true,” states Elliott. “I can still remember holding a copy of Reginald Shepherd’s Some Are Drowning back when I was an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College, and my journey since has been paved by Pitt Poetry Series poets—life-changing voices like Nate Marshall, Toi Derricotte, Ross Gay, Sharon Olds, Larry Levis, and Richard Blanco. Above all, I want to thank Nate Marshall for opening this door—I’ve loved his work since Wild Hundreds won this same prize ten years ago and I am deeply grateful for the way he’s met these poems and given them a profoundly beautiful home.”
Bobby Elliott is an award-winning poet and educator. Raised in New York City, he earned his BA from Sarah Lawrence College and his MFA from the University of Virginia, where he was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow and won the Kahn Prize for Teaching for his work with undergraduate writers. His poems have appeared in RHINO, Poet Lore, Redivider, BOAAT and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and sons.
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(Courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh Press)