New York, NY (April 9, 2026)—The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that Gabriel Antonio Reed has been selected as the winner of the 2026 First Book Award for his debut collection, Reach. The winning manuscript was chosen by the judge for this year’s award, acclaimed poet and Chancellor Emerita Brenda Hillman.
Established in 1975 to support emerging poets and enable the publication of a first book, the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award has helped launch generations of debut collections. With Reach, Gabriel Antonio Reed joins a distinguished lineage of poets whose first books have gone on to shape contemporary poetry.
The prize has recognized poets such as Kweku Abimbola, Kemi Alabi, April Bernard, Nicole Cooley, Matt Rasmussen, Alberto Ríos, Sara Daniele Rivera, Mai Der Vang, and Jenny Xie. Many past recipients have gone on to notable achievements in literature—writing, publishing, teaching, and receiving honors from prestigious organizations, including the National Book Foundation, the National Book Critics Circle, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
In her judge’s citation, Hillman praised the collection’s craft and originality: “Reach, a collection of interconnected notational pieces, displays both grandeur and intimacy. [. . .] Form is explored by way of space on the page; lines are varied and energized by new thought, rendered with sparkling insight. This is a marvelous first book of poetry.”
Reach will be published by Graywolf Press, an independent nonprofit literary publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction on April 6, 2027. As the award recipient, Reed will receive $5,000; a six-week residency at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy; prominent features on Poets.org and in American Poets magazine; and distribution of his book to thousands of Academy of American Poets members, ensuring that it becomes one of the most widely circulated poetry collections of the year.
The 2025 First Book Award was awarded to Daniel Moysaenko for Overtakelessness, which was published by Graywolf Press on April 7, 2026. Finalists for the 2026 First Book Award are J. P. Grasser, for “Species of Least Concern” and Dana Isokawa, for “Minor Character.” Grasser is the winner of the inaugural Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize and serves as an associate editor for 32 Poems. Isokawa’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, and The Southern Review, among other publications. She is the editor of The Margins and a contributing editor of Poets & Writers magazine.
Submissions for the 2027 First Book Award will be accepted from July 1 through September 1, 2026. For guidelines and eligibility requirements, visit Poets.org.
About Gabriel Antonio Reed
Gabriel Antonio Reed is a poet from New Market, Tennessee. He received his MFA from Hollins University and his PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Seneca Review, Red Flag Poetry, and El Nieuwe Acá. He reads poetry for Waxwing. He lives in Tennessee.
About Brenda Hillman
Brenda Hillman is the author of eleven full-length collections from Wesleyan University Press, including In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022), which received the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from The Publishing Triangle. Her earlier collections include Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013), winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and Practical Water (2009), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Hillman has also been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is professor emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California.
About Civitella Ranieri
Located in a fifteenth-century castle in the Umbrian region of Italy, Civitella Ranieri is a residency for writers, composers, and visual artists. Since 1995, Civitella has hosted more than one thousand Fellows and Director’s Guests from around the world. For more information, visit civitella.org.
About Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press is a nonprofit literary publisher of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and work in translation. Graywolf publishes risk-taking, visionary writers who transform culture through literature. Graywolf books and authors have received the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. For more information, visit graywolfpress.org.
About the Academy of American Poets
Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry in the United States. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program. It also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts public poetry programs and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture. To learn more, visit Poets.org.
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