Poet Milena Williamson Receives Eric Gregory Award

The accolades continue for poet Milena Williamson ’17, who was recently named the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, which recognizes writers based in the United Kingdom who are under the age of 30.

Presented by the Society of Authors, the Eric Gregory Award was founded in 1960 and is given annually to support and encourage young poets. Williamson received the award for her collection, The Red Trapeze (currently unpublished).

A PhD candidate studying poetry at The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, this past spring Williamson’s work was featured in New Irish Writing in the Irish Independent. She is also the winner of the 2018 Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award and the 2020 Streetcake Magazine experimental writing prize in poetry.

Williamson moved to Belfast, Ireland in 2017 when she was offered a scholarship to the master's in poetry program at the Seamus Heaney Centre. She also was selected from nearly 200 applicants to participate in Poetry Ireland’s Introduction Series. Originally from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Williamson earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature and creative writing at Oberlin. She was awarded a Florence Snell Scholarship, which is presented to an English major who intends to pursue doctoral work in English/American literature or comparative literature.