Established in memory of poet and editor Ron Offen, the Ron Offen Poetry Prize brings one Chicago poet to campus each year for a public reading. The prize also accommodates one student reader, to be chosen by the visiting poet from anonymous submissions. Any UChicago student is eligible to submit.
Presented in partnership with the Center for Hellenic Studies and the Department of English
Ari Banias is the author of A Symmetry, which won the 2022 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans & Gender Variant Literature, and Anybody, both from W. W. Norton. His work has been supported by numerous fellowships and residencies, and has been published in American Poetry Review, Triple Canopy, The Nation, Georgia Review, The New Republic, Hyperallergic, The Yale Review, and Bæst, among others.
Ari Banias has awarded this year's Ron Offen Poetry Prize to Hanxue Jiang!
Hanxue is a first-year prospective creative writing major in the College. She is from Ningbo, China, and writes in both Chinese and English. She also translates poems from English and Spanish to Chinese. She is a member of the 00s Poets Society, a poetry organization featuring Gen Z Chinese poets around the globe, and is the winner of the 00s International Poetry Prize in 2023 (bilingual prize). She is a board member of Catcher in the Rhyme, the university’s slam poetry RSO, and is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio (2021, 2022, and 2023 cohorts). She paints on her bedroom walls and reads in her wardrobe if she has time.