Carlene Kucharczyk’s debut collection Strange Hymn is the winner of the Juniper Prize for a first book of poems and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in April 2025. She is the recipient of a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council and her work has been published in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, Green Mountains Review Online, Conduit, and Mid-American Review, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was the Henry David Thoreau fellow at the Vermont Studio Center and Writer-in-Residence at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. She has received support from the Center for Book Arts Fine Press Seminar and the Frost Place Poetry Seminar, and holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. She works as an Administrative Assistant in the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College, and lives in Vermont.