Brian Blanchfield is an American poet and essayist.
He was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1973, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. [1] He is the author of two books of poetry, Not Even Then (2004) and A Several World (2014), and a book of essays/autobiography, Proxies (2016).
A Several World was the 2014 recipient of the James Laughlin Award [2] and was a longlist finalist for the National Book Award. [3] The book takes its title from a 17th-century poem by Robert Herrick, and deals with questions about subjectivity and individuality versus the collective. [4] Proxies is a collection of 24 single-subject essays that concludes with a 21-page rolling endnote, "Correction." In a starred review, Publishers Weekly noted that "in each entry Blanchfield picks a subject—foot washing, authorship, owls—and examines it from several angles until the connection between metaphysical principle and lived experience suddenly crystallizes, often producing an analogy as surprising as it is lovely." [5]
Blanchfield's poems and essays have been published by The Nation , [6] Harper's , [7] BOMB, [8] the Paris Review , [9] Brick, [10] Conjunctions, [11] Guernica, [12] and other publications.
He has taught creative writing at the Pratt Institute, Otis College of Art and Design, the University of Montana, the University of Arizona, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently teaches as an associate professor at the University of Idaho. [13] [14]
In 2010 he became a poetry editor of Fence Magazine [15] and in 2015-16 was guest editor of the PEN Poetry Series. [16] He hosted and produced episodes 1-32 of Speedway and Swan, a poetry and music radio show on KXCI Community Radio in Tucson, Arizona. [17]
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
Wayne Koestenbaum is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a 1994 Whiting Award recipient. He received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 2020. He has published over 20 books to date.
Forrest Gander is an American poet, translator, essayist, and novelist. The A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University, Gander won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2019 for Be With and is chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Mary Ruefle is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She has published many collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Dunce, was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Ruefle's debut collection of prose, The Most Of It, appeared in 2008 and her collected lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, was published in August 2012, both published by Wave Books. She has also published a book of erasures, A Little White Shadow (2006).
Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer.
John R. Keene Jr. is a writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. His 2022 poetry collection, Punks: New and Selected Poems, received the National Book Award for Poetry.
Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published five collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.
Douglas Crase is an American poet, essayist and critic. He was born in 1944 in Battle Creek, Michigan. His poetry collection, The Revisionist, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and an American Book Award. He is a former MacArthur Fellow and the recipient of a Whiting Award. Crase lives in New York City and Honesdale, Pennsylvania. His work has been published in many collections, including his poem "Astropastoral", found in The KGB Bar Book Of Poems edited by David Lehman and Star Black.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson is an American poet, editor, publisher, and filmmaker.
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award is an American literary award dedicated to honoring written works that make important contributions to the understanding of racism and the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture. Established in 1935 by Cleveland poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf and originally administered by the Saturday Review, the awards have been administered by the Cleveland Foundation since 1963.
Meghan O'Rourke is an American nonfiction writer, poet and critic.
Terrance Hayes is an American poet and educator who has published seven poetry collections. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010. In September 2014, he was one of 21 recipients of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, awarded to individuals who show outstanding creativity in their work.
The Alice James Award, formerly the Beatrice Hawley Award, is given annually by Alice James Books. The award includes publication of a book-length poetry manuscript and a cash prize.
Kazim Ali is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and professor. His most recent books are Inquisition and All One's Blue. His honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. His poetry and essays have been featured in many literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Barrow Street, Jubilat, The Iowa Review, West Branch and Massachusetts Review, and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2007.
Nightboat Books is an American nonprofit literary press founded in 2004 and located in Brooklyn, New York. The press publishes poetry, fiction, essays, translations, and intergenre books.
Anne Boyer is an American poet and essayist. She is the author of The Romance of Happy Workers (2008), The 2000s (2009), My Common Heart (2011), Garments Against Women (2015), and The Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018). In 2016, she was a featured blogger at the Poetry Foundation, where she wrote an ongoing series of posts about her diagnosis and treatment for a highly aggressive form of breast cancer, as well as the lives and near deaths of poets. Her essays about illness have appeared in Guernica, The New Inquiry, Fullstop, and more. Boyer teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute with the poets Cyrus Console and Jordan Stempleman. Her poetry has been translated into numerous languages including Icelandic, Spanish, Persian, and Swedish. With Guillermo Parra and Cassandra Gillig, she has translated the work of 20th century Venezuelan poets Victor Valera Mora, Miguel James, and Miyo Vestrini.
Daniel Borzutzky is a Chicago-based poet and translator. His collection The Performance of Becoming Human won the 2016 National Book Award. The son of Chilean immigrants, Borzutzky's work often addresses immigration, worker exploitation, political corruption, and economic disparity.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Anya Krugovoy Silver was an American poet. She won a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Georgia Author of the Year Award.
Muriel Leung is an American writer. Her work includes the poetry collection Bone Confetti, which won the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award and Imagine Us, The Swarm, which received the Nightboat’s Poetry Prize. She has received multiple writing fellowships, and her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.