2025 Hurt & Healing Prize FIRST PLACE WINNER: “UPON RECEIVING THE NEWS LOOKING OUT THE KITCHEN WINDOW” By Taryn FitzGerald
It’s time to congratulate Taryn FitzGerald who was selected by Robert Wood Lynn as the First Place Winner of the 2025 Hurt & Healing Prize with her poem “UPON RECEIVING THE NEWS LOOKING OUT THE KITCHEN WINDOW.”
Taryn FitzGerald’s poem encapsulates the isolating discomfort that can happen when a woman’s ability to create life exists in frightening opposition to her health. Her poem is a meditation on the impossibility of certain choices and the burden of our loved ones expectations. FitzGerald’s poetic hand is ambidextrous and controlled. She reveals the spider web of thoughts one can follow in the stillness of indecision. Balancing grim humor, an apt yet unexpected employment of nature imagery, and a disquieting absurdity, FitzGerald shares her view from the kitchen window.
Join her for a look below.
UPON RECEIVING THE NEWS LOOKING OUT THE KITCHEN WINDOW
Taryn FitzGerald
Taryn FitzGerald is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her photo and video-based works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her photos and drawings have most recently appeared in Radar Poetry, Analog Forever Magazine and Porter Gulch Review. She is an emerging writer who has taken classes at the Writers Studio and whose poems have appeared in Edge, a nature connection zine.
