March 18, 2010

Rachel Dilworth’s first book, The Wild Rose Asylum: Poems of the Magdalen Laundries of Ireland, won the 2008 Akron Poetry Prize, chosen by Rita Dove. It is newly available from the University of Akron Press. Rachel’s poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, AGNI Online, American Literary Review, Chautauqua, Spoon River Poetry Review, Southern Indiana Review, Bay Nature, and elsewhere. She has received a Fulbright Fellowship to Ireland for creative writing, a Jack Straw Writers Program residency, Lyric Poetry Review’s first Lyric Family Poetry Prize, commendation in the UK National Poetry Competition, Yale’s Clapp Fellowship for poetry, scholarship support from the Bread Loaf and Napa Valley Writers’ Conferences, a Dorothy Prize, and other awards. Rachel grew up amidst the rain, rhodies, and evergreens of western Washington, and she continues to make the beautiful Puget Sound region her home.