Poetry Prizes and Fellowships
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Witter Bynner Fellowships
2012 Fellows
L. S. Asekoff has published four books of poetry: Dreams of a Work (1994) and North Star (1997) with Orchises Press, and The Gate of Horn (2010) and the verse-novella Freedom Hill (2011) with TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press. His poems have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter and he has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fund for Poetry.
Asekoff was born in 1939 in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Bowdoin College, Trinity College (Dublin), and Brandeis University. He taught for forty-two years at Brooklyn College, where he was coordinator of the MFA Poetry Program and faculty associate of The Wolfe Institute for the Humanities. He lives in Clermont, New York with his wife, the printmaker, Mary Louise Kalin.
Sheila Black is the author of two poetry collections: “Love/Iraq” (2009) and “house of Bone” (2007). A third collection, “Wen Kroy,” recently won the Orphic Prize in Poetry from Dream Horse Press and is forthcoming in 2012. In 2011 Black co-edited the anthology “Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability” along with Jennifer Bartlett and Mike Northen. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Cutback, Diode, Puerto Del Sol, and other journals. She is the recipient of the Frost-Pellicer Frontera Prize (2000). Black currently resides in New Mexico with her husband, Duncan Hayse, and their three children: Annabelle, Walker, and Eliza.
2011 Fellows
Former Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin chose two seasoned voices in poetry, Forrest Gander and Robert Bringhurst, to receive the 2011 Witter Bynner Fellowships.
2010 Fellows
Former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan chose two talented voices in poetry, Jill McDonough and Atsuro Riley, for the 2010 Witter Bynner Fellowships.
- Read News Release Announcement
- Watch a Webcast of the Witter Bynner Fellows Poetry Reading
- Learn more about Atsuro Riley
- Learn more about Jill McDonough
2009 Fellows
Former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan chose two gifted voices in poetry, Christina Davis and Mary Szybist, for the 2009 Witter Bynner Fellowships.
- Read News Release Announcement
- Watch a Webcast of the Witter Bynner Fellows Poetry Reading
- Watch a video interview with Christina Davis
- Watch a video interview with Mary Szybist
photo of Christina Davis by Jo Eldredge Morrisey
2008 Fellows
Former Poet Laureate Charles Simic chose Matthew Thorburn and Monica Youn for the 2008 Witter Bynner Fellowships. Learn more about these emerging poets by exploring the resources below. Watch a webcast of the 2008 Witter Bynner Fellowship Awardees
Matthew Thorburn
Matthew Thorburn works as a business-development writer for an international law firm in New York City. He is the author of Subject to Change (2004), and his poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review and other journals. From 2000 to 2004, Thorburn founded and co-edited the poetry journal Good Foot. His work has been recognized with the Mississippi Review Prize and the Belfast Poetry Festival’s inaugural Festivo Prize.
Thorburn is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the MFA program at The New School, a university in New York City. He is working on a second book of poems.
- Visit Matthew Thorburn's Web site .
Monica Youn
Monica Youn is an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and an adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University. She is the author of Barter (2003). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Norton Anthology: Language for a New Century.
Youn has earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton, a master’s of philosophy from Oxford and a law degree from Yale. She has received the Rhodes Scholarship and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University.
- The Poetry Foundation's Monica Youn page
- Monica Youn 2010 National Book Award Finalist in Poetry
2007 Fellows
Former Poet Laureate Donald Hall has chosen Laurie Lamon and David Tucker for the 2007 Witter Bynner Fellowships. Learn more about these emerging poets by exploring the resources below.
- Listen to an audio clip of Donald Hall introducing Laurie Lamon and David Tucker
- Donald Hall and Witter Bynner Fellowship Awardees Poetry Reading
Laurie Lamon
Laurie Lamon is the author of The Fork Without Hunger (2005). She was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2001 for the poem, "Pain Thinks of the Beautiful Table." Her work has appeared in the The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Ploughshares and other magazines and reviews. Lamon earned a doctorate in English literature in 1988 from the University of Utah, a master’s degree in 1982 from the University of Montana and a bachelor’s degree in 1978 from Whitworth College, where she is now an associate professor.
Photo by William Siems
- Laurie Lamon Web site
- Laurie Lamon at Whitworth College , Spokane WA
David Tucker
David Tucker, a graduate of the University of Michigan, studied poetry with Robert Hayden, and his collection, Late for Work (2006), won a Bakeless Prize from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. His earlier collection, Days When Nothing Happens, won the 2003 Slapering Hol Press chapbook competition. Tucker has worked for 28 years at leading newspapers and is a member of the New Jersey Star-Ledger team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. A colleague at the newspaper said, "His nose for news is matched only by his ear for language and a capacious heart always seeking to plumb the human condition with both."
Video courtesy of NJN Television
Previous Witter Bynner Fellows
- 2007: Laurie Lamon and David Tucker (appointed by Donald Hall)
- 2006: Joseph Stroud and Connie Wanek (appointed by Ted Kooser)
- 2005: Claudia Emerson, Martin Walls (appointed by Ted Kooser)
- 2004: Dana Levin, Spencer Reece (appointed by Louise Glück)
- 2003: Major Jackson, Rebecca Wee (appointed by Billy Collins)
- 2002: George Bilgere, Katia Kopovich (appointed by Billy Collins)
- 2001: Tory Dent, Nick Flynn (appointed by Stanley Kunitz)
- 2000: Naomi Shihab Nye, Joshua Weiner (appointed by Robert Pinsky)
- 1999: David Gewanter, Campbell McGrath, Heather McHugh (appointed by Robert Pinsky)
- 1998: Carol Muske-Dukes, Carl Phillips (appointed by Robert Pinsky)