HWS News
2 July 2026 From Manuscript to Broadside
Students, alumni and faculty handprint the winning poem from the Seneca Review’s Carter Harris Broadside Poetry Prize.
As fresh ink met paper, Katie Peterson's “Narrative Elegy” — the winner of the inaugural Carter Harris Broadside Poetry Prize — emerged from the press as one of 100 handcrafted broadsides. Students worked in the HWS’ Wells Book Arts Center to print the award-winning poem, which is now available to order in the Seneca Review’s online store.
Established by the Seneca Review, the Carter Harris Broadside Poetry Prize is a new national competition recognizing a single outstanding poem each year. Selected by a distinguished guest judge, the winning poem receives publication in the Seneca Review and is preserved as a limited-edition letterpress broadside, connecting contemporary poetry with one of publishing's oldest traditions.
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For the competition, the journal’s editors read through hundreds of submissions to settle on 10 to 15 finalists. Those poems were then judged by nationally acclaimed poet and essayist Paisley Rekdal, who selected Peterson's poem.
Rekdal wrote in her citation, "I love ‘Narrative Elegy’ because it manages to make an unremarkable subject — a fraught parental visit to the speaker's hometown — surprisingly weird, and a subtle but much larger meditation on the constraints that attend love in general, whether that love is for family members, for a specific environment, for the state of the world itself (a hard thing to love currently, as the poet notes)." Rekdal praised Peterson’s "playful use of rhyme," "brilliantly weird syntax and line breaks" and the way it captures "the emotional complexity of their relationship" in a form and subject that "match brilliantly."
Under the guidance of Book Arts Center Director Mary Tasillo, Hazel Brown '28, Elise Provost ’26, Andrew Pilet ’26, Grace N. Snook '25, MAT '26, Katelyn Weeks '24, MAT '25 and Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing Kathryn Cowles, handprinted each broadside using traditional letterpress techniques.
Each sheet was carefully inked, pressed and inspected, giving students a firsthand experience of fine-art printing.
Two copies of the finished broadside were framed — one for the Seneca Review office and another to be presented to Peterson. Her poem also appears in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of Seneca Review (Vol. 56, No. 1).
The project represents another milestone in the journal's ongoing revitalization.
Since entering a new chapter under Editor Geoffrey Babbitt, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and English and Creative Writing, the Seneca Review has expanded opportunities for students to engage in literary publishing while building on its international reputation for innovative poetry.
Next spring, the Carter Harris Broadside Poetry Prize will be part of a new course Babbit is creating that will focus on evaluating contemporary poetry. Students will get to participate in the selection process, giving HWS students a hands-on role in bringing exceptional writing from manuscript to finished page.
Top: Book Arts Center Director Mary Tasillo (left) with Hazel Brown '28 and Andrew Pilet ’26
