Colorado College Professor of English Jane Hilberry has won the inaugural Cantor Prize from the Telluride Institute for her poem, "Poem Beginning with a Line from Paul Monette."

The award is presented for the best poem submitted by a poet from Colorado for the Mark Fischer Prize, a national award for which Hilberry was a finalist. The poems were judged anonymously by Joan Logghe, former poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hilberry will be reading the poem, which is about her father's death, at the Telluride Literary Arts Festival on Saturday, May 19. She and her father, Conrad Hilberry, co-authored a book of poems in 2009 titled "This Awkward Art." The poems are each an individual response to a shared subject, seen from different points of view.

She is the author of five books, one of which, "Body Painting," won the 2006 Colorado Book award for poetry. Hilberry was named a Colorado College Face of Innovation in 2014.