Poetry Foundation Announces 2023 Pegasus Awards Winners and a New Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry
Recognizing poets for achievement in craft, criticism, and service to the literary arts.
CHICAGO, September 7, 2023—The Poetry Foundation is proud to announce the recipients of the 2023 Pegasus Awards, a family of literary prizes. In honor of the Foundation’s 20th anniversary, a new prize is introduced: the Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry. The winners will be celebrated at the Pegasus Awards ceremony in Chicago in October.
Kimiko Hahn Wins Lifetime Achievement Award
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize recognizes a living US poet for their outstanding lifetime achievement with an award of $100,000. Presented annually, it is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and one of the nation’s largest literary prizes.
Kimiko Hahn is the author of 10 books of poetry, including Foreign Bodies; Brain Fever; Toxic Flora; The Narrow Road to the Interior, a collection that takes its title from Bashô’s famous poetic journal; The Unbearable Heart, winner of the American Book Award; and Earshot, winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award.
Hahn is a distinguished professor in the creative writing and literary translation program at Queens College of the City University of New York, where she also established the City University of New York Chapbook Festival. In January 2023, she was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
“Kimiko Hahn’s poetry projects the soul and challenges the human spirit by inviting readers to explore the mysteries of science and nature,“ said Poetry Foundation president, Michelle T. Boone. “It’s our privilege to acknowledge her decades of advancing poetry through her writing and teaching.”
New Award Recognizes Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady
The Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry debuts as an award bestowed in recognition of commitment and extraordinary work in poetry and the literary arts through administration, advocacy, education, publishing, or service. The award includes a cash prize of $25,000, to be awarded annually.
The inaugural recipients of the Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry are Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. Derricotte and Eady are the founders of Cave Canem, established in 1996 to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in the literary landscape.
That year, Cave Canem welcomed an inaugural cohort of fellows to a residency of intensive poetry workshops and readings, an unparalleled opportunity to join a community of peers and study with a faculty of renowned poets. To date, Cave Canem Fellowships have supported more than 500 poets, many of whom have gone on to distinguished literary careers, including winners of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, and poets laureate.
“The impact of Toi and Cornelius’s work as mentors, collaborators, and advocates cannot be overstated,” said Poetry magazine editor, Adrian Matejka. “As a Cave Canem fellow myself, I have been the grateful recipient of their service to poetry and the path they’ve created for countless other Black poets.”
Douglas Kearney Receives Award for Work of Criticism
The Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism is an annual $10,000 prize that commends an outstanding book-length work of criticism published in the US in the prior calendar year. Eligible works include biographies, essay collections, and critical editions that consider the subject of poetry or poets.
Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, and librettist. Kearney won the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism for Optic Subwoof (Wave Books), a collection of talks he presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. He has published eight books, including the collection Sho, a National Book Awards finalist and the winner of a Griffin Poetry Prize; and Buck Studies, winner of a Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award. Kearney has staged four operas, one of which, The Sweet Land, was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.
The 2023 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism finalists were Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb for Auden and the Muse of History, Carl Phillips for My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing, and Katherine Rundell for Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne.
Elizabeth Acevedo Continues Service as Young People’s Poet Laureate
Elizabeth Acevedo—the poet, novelist, National Poetry Slam Champion, and bestselling author of The Poet X and Family Lore—continues her two-year tenure as Young People’s Poet Laureate.
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About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation recognizes the power of words to transform lives. We work to amplify poetry and celebrate poets by fostering spaces for all to create, experience, and share poetry. Follow the Poetry Foundation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and Poetry at @PoetryMagazine.
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