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.

more finalists

It’s awards season, and PEN America has announced the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists. See the complete list here, with poetry books in assorted categories.

Poetry titles include Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Graywolf Press), Be Recorder by Carmen Giménez Smith (Graywolf Press), Erou by Maya Phillips (Four Way Books), and five book-length translations of poetry: Final Matters: Selected Poems, 2004-2010 by Szilárd Borbély (Princeton University Press), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet; Room in Rome bu Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Cardboard House Press), translated from the Spanish by David Shook; Daybook 1918: Early Fragments by J.V. Foix (Northwestern University Press), translated from the Catalan by Lawrence Venuti; Killing Plato by Chantal Maillard (New Directions Publishing), translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert; and The Winter Garden Photograph by Reina María Rodríguez (Ugly Duckling Presse), translated from the Spanish by Kristin Dykstra and Nancy Gates Madsen.

Congratulations, finalists! The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Monday, March 2, 2020, at Town Hall in New York City.

American Book Awards

The Before Columbus Foundation has announced the winners of the Fortieth Annual American Book Awards. Created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community, the awards recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions.

The 2019 American Book Award Winners are:

Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, and Floyd Cheung (editors)
John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press)

May-lee Chai
Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories (Blair)

Louise DeSalvo
The House of Early Sorrows: A Memoir in Essays (Fordham University Press)

Heid E. Erdrich (editor)
New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press)

Ángel García
Teeth Never Sleep: Poems (University of Arkansas Press)

Tommy Orange
There There: A Novel (Knopf)

Halifu Osumare
Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir (University Press of Florida)

Christopher Patton
Unlikeness Is Us: Fourteen from the Exeter Book (Gaspereau Press)

Mark Sarvas
Memento Park: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Jeffrey C. Stewart
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press)

William T. Vollmann
Carbon Ideologies: Volume I, No Immediate Danger, Volume II, No Good Alternative (Viking)

G. Willow Wilson (author), Nico Leon (illustrator)
Ms. Marvel Vol. 9: Teenage Wasteland (Marvel)

Lifetime Achievement Award: Nathan Hare

Editor/Publisher Award: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Oral Literature Award: Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa)

The winners will be formally recognized on Friday, November 1, 2019, from 1:00-4:00pm, at the San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium. Congratulations one and all!

2019 Boynton winners

The Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest committee has announced the winners of this year’s contest.

Winners will read their poems at a free public awards ceremony, 7:00pm, Thursday, May 16, 2019, at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal, 355 Harris Avenue, in Fairhaven. Poet Kevin Murphy will host the ceremony.

Now in its 14th year, the annual contest is open to Whatcom County residents of all ages and poetry experience. This year’s winners were chosen by judges Jessica Lohafer and Christopher Patton, both Bellingham-based poets.

Ten Walk Award winners will have their poems displayed for a year on plaques outside the downtown Bellingham Public Library. Those poems, and the 14 Merit Award winners, also will be displayed on artist-designed placards on WTA buses. (The winning poems and placards will be posted weekly on this site following the awards ceremony.)

Winners include Jaelyn Pitts, a Bellingham 3-year-old, the youngest in the contest’s history; and award-winning poet Luci Shaw of Bellingham, who, at age 90, is likely the contest’s oldest winner ever.

Youths who won the Walk Award are Maddie Patterson, 5th grade, Silver Beach Elementary; Gavin James Karney, 6th grade, Whatcom Middle; Bella Mendoza, 12th grade, Squalicum High; Margaux Barber, kindergarten, Sunnyland Elementary; and Jaelyn Pitts.

Adults who won the Walk Award are Barbara Bloom of Bellingham, Tor of Bellingham, Sandra F. Lucke of Lynden, Stephany Vogel of Bellingham, and Luci Shaw.

Youths won won the Merit Award are Quinn Moore, 4th grade, Natural Learning Center; Porter Chesbrough, 6th grade, Whatcom Middle; Gaia Garza, 6th grade, Whatcom Middle; Eliot Stockman, 6th grade, Whatcom Middle; Lucas Cunningham, 12th grade, Sehome High; Anishka Duggal, 11th grade, Sehome High; Karanjot Mann, 12th grade, Squalicum High; and Adam McCluskey, 11th grade, Squalicum High.

Six adults won a Merit Award: Sally Hewitt of Glacier, Phelps McIlvaine of Bellingham, Carlos Martinez of Ferndale, Tom Moore of Bellingham, Susan Cohen Raphael of Bellingham, and Cadillac Joe Wright of Bellingham.

A chapbook of the winning poems will be available for purchase at the awards ceremony.

Congratulations to the winners and heartfelt thanks to the hundreds of poets who submitted their work to this year’s contest.

tonight in New York

This evening, April 18, 2019, the National Arts Club in New York City will welcome the 109th Annual Poetry Society of America Awards Ceremony. The evening will honor the 2019 Frost Medalist, Eleanor Wilner, who will deliver the annual Frost Lecture, and celebrate the new winners of distinguished Annual Awards, with readings by Darcie Dennigan, Sara Henning, Anna Maria Hong, Cecily Parks, Vitoria Perez, and G. C. Waldrep.

We congratulate all of the winners, and in particular Seattle poet Kelli Russell Agodon, winner of the 2019 Lyric Poetry Award for her poem, At Times My Body Leans Toward Loss.

See the complete list of current and past winners here.

award season

The National Book Critics Circle has announced its 31 finalists in six categories — autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry — for the outstanding books of 2018. The finalists in poetry are:

• Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin Books)
• Ada Limón, The Carrying (Milkweed)
• Erika Meitner, Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions)
• Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press)
• Adam Zagajewski, Asymmetry. Translated by Clare Cavanagh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Terrance Hayes was also listed as a finalist in the Criticism category, for To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight (Wave).

The National Book Critics Circle Awards, begun in 1974 and considered among the most prestigious in American letters, are the sole prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book-review editors. The awards will be presented on March 14, 2019 at a free public event held at the New School in New York City. See the complete list of finalists in all categories here.

PEN America Literary Awards longlist

PEN America has announced the longlists for the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards, including 10 semi-finalists for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation (judged by Sinan Antoon, Ewa Chrusciel, Peter Filkins, Katrine Øgaard Jensen).

The finalists for all book awards will be announced in January 2019. The winners will be celebrated at the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on February 26 at the NYU Skirball Center in NYC.

Founded in 1922, PEN America is the largest of the more than 100 centers worldwide that make up the PEN International network. PEN America works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.