Fitzcarraldo Editions and the Mahler & LeWitt Studios are thrilled to announce that Daisy Lafarge has been awarded the inaugural Sacha Verna Poetry Residency.

The Sacha Verna Poetry Residency offers a fully funded, four-week development residency at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy, for a poet publishing with Fitzcarraldo Editions. Lafarge is taking up the residency in October 2026.

The residency is organized in memory of the Swiss cultural journalist, Sacha Verna, and supported by Carol LeWitt. Poets are nominated by a panel made up of Fitzcarraldo Editions, Mahler & LeWitt Studios and the family of Sacha Verna. It builds on a longstanding collaboration between Fitzcarraldo Editions and Mahler & LeWitt Studios who, since 2016, have organized the Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize.

Daisy Lafarge was born in Hastings and has lived in Scotland since 2011. She is the author of the novel Paul (Granta, 2021), which won a Betty Trask Award, and the poetry collection Life Without Air (Granta, 2020), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and awarded Scottish Poetry Book of the Year. Lovebug, a book on the poetics of infection, was published by Peninsula in 2023. Her writing has appeared in Granta, frieze, the Financial Times, ArtReview, TANK, The White Review, and elsewhere. She received a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2021 and is the 2026 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University. Her second novel, ASTRALABE, is forthcoming from Faber in 2027. Her next collection of poetry will be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent publisher specializing in contemporary fiction, long-form essays and poetry. Founded in 2014, it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language. With a donation from the T.S. Eliot Foundation, the Fitzcarraldo Editions poetry list was launched in 2025.

daisylafarge.com