Sara Hovda, a student in the Master of Fine Arts program at UC Riverside, has won the 2026 Trio Award for her debut poetry manuscript, “Night’s Grammar.”
“I was honestly beside myself,” Hovda said. “After I received the call, I took a two-hour walk, came home, couldn’t sleep, and then took a three-hour walk.”
She added, “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the MFA program here at UC-Riverside, and I’m very thankful to my professors here.”
The contest is open to writers submitting their first or second poetry manuscript to Trio House Press, which grants the $1,000 award and publishes the winning work. The winner also receives 20 copies of the finished book.
The poet Kinsale Drake, who judged this year’s contest, described “Night’s Grammar” as “lush, haunted, and at times stunningly funny,” calling it “a gift — a forest of language intent on becoming and unbecoming.”
The book will be published July 1, 2027, but early copies will be available at the 2027 Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference & Bookfair in Chicago, which runs March 17-20. Hovda will read from the poetry collection at an off-site location and sign copies of it at a Trio House Press booth.
Hovda earned a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 2018 and a bachelor’s degree from Winona State University in Minnesota in 2014.
Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Passages North, Nimrod, and Shō Poetry Journal.