Founded in 1997, Perugia Press is a nonprofit feminist press that publishes one beautifully designed book each year: the winner of the Perugia Press Prize, our annual national contest for first or second books of poetry by women. Our mission is to celebrate and support women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities, in print and beyond. We aim to expand the audience for poetry by making books that welcome longtime readers of poetry and those new to poetry. We champion our poets, and poetry, whenever we can, through social media, and at local, regional, and national book fairs, readings, and events. We also maintain resources for educators for incorporating our books into their curricula. Read our 2025 Annual Report.
At Perugia Press, we are doing our part to tip the scales of gender inequity in poetry into balance. Our books have won many acclaimed post-publication prizes, including the James Laughlin Award/Academy of American Poets, the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award, the PEN Center USA Award, and the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Poetry Prize, among others.
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“Perugia Press has been quietly building an extraordinary list of poets and publishing them in beautiful books. The future of American poetry literally depends on this kind of dedication and effort.”
Chase Twichell
This documentary short by filmmaker Kate Way captures conversations with our poets and editors and scenes from our twentieth anniversary reading and writing workshops at Smith College.
Rebecca Olander took the helm at Perugia Press in 2016 after serving as a longtime reader, judge, and board member. She has taught writing at Amherst and Smith colleges, Westfield State University, and Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop and works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program at Wilkes University. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of three books: Dressing the Wounds (a dgp chapbook, 2019), Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry, 2021), a MA Book Award finalist, and Singing from the Deep End (CavanKerry, 2026). To learn more about her work, visit her website.
Jean Blakeman is a poet and editor. Her poems have appeared in Silkworm, Compass Roads, and 56 Days of August. She was a longtime board member of Center for New Americans, an adult education center supporting the immigrant, refugee, and migrant communities in Western MA, where she served in officer roles and on the advisory committee for its annual “30 Poems in November!” literary fundraiser. In addition to poetry, her interests include knitting, swimming, and baseball.
Carolina Hotchandani is the author of The Book Eaters, the 2023 Perugia Press Prize winner and one of ten debut poetry books featured in Poets & Writers Magazine’s 2024 debut poets issue. She was awarded a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Fellowship, a Nebraska Book Award, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, AGNI, AQR, Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Prairie Schooner, Smartish Pace, and others. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska. To learn more about her work, visit her website.
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn’s first book of poems, Girl in a Bear Suit (2024), won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Prize, selected by Christopher Citro. Recent work has appeared in SIR, Arkansas International, Palette Poetry, Salamander, Fugue, Banshee, On the Seawall and Couplet Poetry, and she has twice been selected for Best New Poets. She is at work on a series of mixed-media blackout poems, hem, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She lives in Western MA with her family, where she is the Program & Outreach Coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center and an associate editor of Nine Syllables Press, both housed at Smith College. To learn more about her work, visit her website.
Susan Kan is the founder and former director of Perugia Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Now, she enjoys creative projects and volunteering with the Center for New Americans, the Welcome Home Refugee Resettlement program, and Happier Valley Comedy Theater.
Kristin LaFollette is the author of the poetry collections Intern Year (Harbor Editions, 2026), Hematology (winner of the 2021 Harbor Editions Laureate Prize), and Body Parts (winner of the 2017 GFT Press Chapbook Prize), and her poems have been published in The Missouri Review, Ghost City Review, Rogue Agent, The Tusculum Review, and The Maynard, among others. She received an M.A. from Indiana University South Bend and a Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University and is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana. To learn more about her work, visit her website.
Shoshana Olidort is a writer, translator, and educator. Her work has appeared in Asymptote, the Laurel Review, Lit Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Poetry Northwest, Public Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and World Literature Today, among other outlets. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University and is prose editor for the Poetry Foundation. Currently, she is a visiting lecturer in English at Amherst College. To learn more about her work, visit her website.
Arya Samuelson is a writer and editor living in Northampton, MA. She is the winner of CutBank’s Montana Prize in Non-Fiction awarded by Cheryl Strayed, and her writing has also appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Columbia Journal, New Delta Review, The Millions, and elsewhere. She teaches writing workshops with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, Writers in Progress, LitReactor, Elephant Rock, and through her own writing platform, Writing as Ritual. She holds an MFA from Mills College in Prose and works professionally as a grant writer for social change organizations. To learn more about her work, visit her website.
Yasotha Sriharan is a poet and professor in the Pioneer Valley. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Papua New Guinea and England before immigrating to the U.S. She writes about the countries of her childhood. She teaches at Springfield Technical Community College and has taught at Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Springfield College, and other colleges in the area.
