Pulitzer!

The 2022 Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week and Diane Seuss is the winner in poetry for her much-lauded book, frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press), “a virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to confront the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt.”

We congratulate Diane Seuss, and the two finalists in poetry, Will Alexander for Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten (New Directions) and Mai Der Vang for Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press), and to Graywolf Press for claiming two spots among the top three.

See the complete list of 2022 Pulitzer Prizes.

poetry from Canada

The League of Canadian Poets has just posted the 2022 Book Awards longlists. There are three awards: the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award award recognizes a first book of poetry published by a Canadian writer in the preceding year; the Pat Lowther Memorial Award recognizes a book of poetry published by a Canadian woman in the preceding year; and the Raymond Souster Award recognizes a book of poetry by a League member published in the preceding year. See the complete list of titles here.

more awards

The MacArthur Foundation has just announced the slate of 25 MacArthur Fellows for 2021. The Foundation awards “unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” Known colloquially as “genius” grants, the awards recognize exceptional vision in a variety of fields. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $625,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.

Among this year’s fellows are poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Reginald Dwayne Betts, and Don Mee Choi.

awards season

A few days ago, we mentioned the Washington State Book Awards, and that Patricia Smith had been awarded the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize. Smith’s award is dazzling, and we should also note the Academy of American Poets prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award, which went to Toi Derricotte, the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, the National Book Foundation’s 2021 National Book Awards Longlist for Poetry, and poet Patricia Lockwood, whose debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, has been shortlisted for both the 2021 Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Congratulations finalists and winners!

Poetry prizes are announced throughout the year. Finalists for the UK’s T.S. Eliot Prize and Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards will be announced in mid-October.

what a list!

PEN America has announced the finalists for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards, and what a list it is!

To make their decisions, the judges narrowed down 1850+ submissions to 55 books, spanning 11 awards in the categories of science writing, the essay, poetry and short story collections, translation, the novel, and more. Twenty of the books featured are from writers making their literary debuts. Half of the open-genre award finalists are poetry collections.

The winners will be celebrated at the PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony, to take place virtually on Thursday, April 8, 2021, and will be open to a global audience. (Details TBA.)

meanwhile, across the border

Thirty-two writers from across Canada have been longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. The shortlist will be announced tomorrow, November 5, 2020, and the winner will be announced on November 12. Learn more about the poets and their poems on the CBC Literary Prizes page.

Congratulations, poets!

awards season

The Poetry Society of America has announced the winners of the 2020 Annual Awards. See the complete list of winners and finalists and read sample poems here. You can also see and hear a number of the winners reading their work with the links provided below (but not on the PSA website):

Atsuro Riley is the winner of the 2020 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for a manuscript in progress. Atsuro Riley reads “Oak”

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the winner of the 2020 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award for a selection of poems by a mid-career poet. Teri Ellen Cross Davis reads “The Goddess of Cleaning”

Michael Dumanis is the winner of the 2020 Lyric Poetry Award. Michael Dumanis reads “The Empire of Light”

JinJin Xu is the winner of the 2020 George Bogin Memorial Award for a selection of poems that use language in an original way to reflect the encounter of the ordinary and the extraordinary and to take a stand against oppression in any of its forms. JinJin Xu reads from “To Red Dust (II)”

David Keplinger is the winner of the 2020 Emily Dickinson Award for a poem inspired by Emily Dickinson’s work. David Keplinger reads “Reading Emily Dickinson in Amherst Massachusetts”

Dai “Debby” Shi is the winner of the 2020 Student Poetry Award. Dai “Debby” Shi reading “It’s Too Early”

Pulitzers

Pulitzer Administrator Dana Canedy has just announced the 2020 Pulitzer Prizes.

The finalists in poetry are:
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Only As the Day Is Long by Dorianne Laux
Dunce by Mary Ruefle

The 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been awarded to Jericho Brown. Congratulations!

Watch the video of the announcement and read the full list of winners on the Pulitzer site.

2020 Guggenheim Fellowships

Congratulations to the 175 writers, scholars, artists, and scientists who have been named winners of 2020 Guggenheim fellowships. The impressive list includes the following poets:

• Michael Dickman, Poet, Princeton, New Jersey; Lecturer in Creative Writing, Princeton University
• Janice N. Harrington, Poet, Champaign, Illinois; Professor of English, University of Illinois
• Ada Limón, Poet, Lexington, Kentucky
• Philip Metres, Poet, University Heights, Ohio; Professor of English, John Carroll University
• Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Poet, Oxford, Mississippi; Professor of English, University of Mississippi
• Lisa Olstein, Poet, Austin, Texas; Professor, Department of English, University of Texas at Austin
• Jana Prikryl, Poet, Brooklyn, New York
• Diane Seuss, Poet, Kalamazoo, Michigan
• Brian Teare, Poet, Charlottesville, Virginia; Associate Professor of Creative Writing, University of Virginia

“Guggenheim Fellowships are grants to selected individuals made for a minimum of six months and a maximum of twelve months. Since the purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide Fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible, grants are made freely. No special conditions attach to them, and Fellows may spend their grant funds in any manner they deem necessary to their work.”

awards

The National Book Critics Circle last week announced awards for “the finest books published in English in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.”

The award for poetry went to Morgan Parker, Magical Negro (Tin House) and Naomi Shihab Nye received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.

See the complete list of winners and finalists. And congratulations to one and all.