Bangladeshi American Anuradha Bhowmik Wins Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize

Her collection “Brown Girl Chromatography” is shaped by the New Jersey native’s life growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the U.S.

Bangladeshi American poet and writer Anuradha Bhowmik has won the 2021 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for her collection “Brown Girl Chromatography.” The prize is given annually by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

The poetry collection is shaped by Bhowmik’s life growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the United States, according to a Pitt press release. “The collection looks at issues of race, class, gender and sexuality in post-9/11 America while navigating Bhowmik’s millennial childhood, adolescence and adulthood,” the press release said. The book will be published this fall by the Pitt Press as part of the Pitt Poetry Series.

Originally from New Jersey, Bhowmik earned her master of fine arts from Virginia Tech. A 2022 Kundiman Fellow, she won the AWP Intro Journals Project in Poetry in 2018. She has received awards from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Community of Writers, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Frost Place, the Indiana University Writers’ Conference, the Eckerd College Writers’ Conference and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. She currently lives in Philadelphia.

Established in 1981, the Starrett prize honors Agnes Lynch Starrett, the first director of the Pitt Press, and is awarded for a first full-length book of poems. The prize carries a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press.