In Memory of Paula Trachtman
Paula Trachtman at the 2013 Amy Award Reading. Credit: Margarita Corporan
Poets & Writers notes the passing of Paula Trachtman, benefactor of the Amy Award, who died on August 16, 2019. Ms. Trachtman was a generous, longtime supporter of Poets & Writers. The author of a bestselling novel, Disturb Not the Dream (Ballentine, 1980), Trachtman was also a teacher, editor, and publisher. A long-time resident of Amagansett and, in recent years, Greenport, New York, she is survived by her husband, Ed Butscher. Read an obituary from the East Hampton Star here.
Ms. Trachtman and Mr. Butscher founded the Amy Award in 1995 in memory of Ms. Trachtman's daughter, Amy Elisabeth Rothholz, an actor and poet who died at the age of twenty-five. Since the start of the Amy Award, more than fifty-five young women poets who live in the New York City metropolitan area or on Long Island have received the prize. Poets & Writers is grateful for Ms. Trachtman’s long-standing support of poets and poetry.
About the Amy Award
Each year between 1995 and 2019, Poets & Writers presented the Amy Award to recognize promising women poets, age 30 and under, living in the New York City metropolitan area or on Long Island. Winners received a modest honorarium and gave a reading hosted by Poets & Writers in New York City.
2019 Winners
Winners of the 2019 Amy Award were Nadra Mabrouk, Megan Pinto, and Stephanie Tom.
Read poems by the 2019 winners.
Past Winners
- Lindsay Adkins
- Desiree Bailey
- Emily Barton
- Kiley Bense
- Genevieve Burger-Weiser
- Lisabeth Burton
- Wendy Chen
- Ebony E. Chinn
- Jerie Choi
- Alexandra Cordera
- Rio Cortez
- Caitlin Doyle
- Dorene Evans
- Laura Fairgrieve
- Hafizah Geter
- K. D. Henley
- Carlie Hoffman
- Shannon Holman
- Ava Hu
- Sarah Ruth Jacobs
- Courtney Kampa
- Liza Katz
- Simone Kearney
- K. Morgan Keenan
- Eugenia Leigh
- Amanda Lichtenberg
- Nabila Lovelace
- Nadra Mabrouk
- Shireen Madon
- Sally Wen Mao
- Amy Meng
- Kerry Ann Minto
- Holly Mitchell
- Annabelle Moseley
- Idra Novey
- Stella Padnos
- Alison Roh Park
- Cecily Parks
- Prudence Peiffer
- Shabnam Piryaei
- Frances Justine Post
- Hila Ratzabi
- Jendi Reiter
- Christie Ann Reynolds
- Anne Marie Rooney
- Jessica Saffer
- Sreshtha Sen
- Mrigaa Sethi
- Laurie Siegal
- Alexandra Smyth
- Jessica Max Stein
- Leigh Stein
- Lindsay Stern
- Tamara Tiska
- Jeannie Vanasco
- Alexandra Wilder
- Wendy Wisner
- Jenny Xie
- Crystal Yeung