Fence is happy to announce that the winner of this year’s Motherwell Prize is Elizabeth Marie Young.

The Motherwell Prize, formerly run as the Alberta Prize, is an annual series, generously endowed by Jennifer S. Epstein, which offers publication of a first or second book of poems by a woman, as well as a five thousand dollar cash prize.

Young’s manuscript, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, will be published in the spring of 2009, most likely under a different title. The author is in the process of completing her PhD in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. She will be teaching Latin and comparative literature at Boston’s Wellesley College. A small book of her sonnets is coming out from Omahrahu press.

The finalists for this year’s prize were: Alburnum of the Green and Living Tree, by Lara Candland, of Provo, Utah; Notes from Outside Sources, by Amick Boone, of San Francisco, CA; Cryptography for Robert Lansberry, by Robin Clarke, of Pittsburgh, PA; Dressed Like a Kwaker, by Melanie Hubbard, of Ruskin, FL; Partial Waking, by Lizbeth Keiley, of Boca Raton, FL; The Law of Double Reflection, by Jennifer Mackenzie, of Portland, OR; The Dwarf Light, by Marina Lazzara, of San Francisco, CA; and The Two Standards, by Heather Winterer, of Las Vegas, NV.

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