Louise Elisabeth Glück was an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
William Stanley Merwin was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She found inspiration for her work in nature and had a lifelong habit of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterized by wonderment at the natural environment, vivid imagery, and unadorned language. In 2007, she was declared the best-selling poet in the United States.
Jack Gilbert was an American poet. Gilbert was acquainted with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, both prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, but is not considered a Beat Poet; he described himself as a "serious romantic." Over his five-decade-long career, he published five full collections of poetry.
Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist best known for his work My Alexandria. He was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.
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 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, in 2012, both published by Wave Books. She has also published a book of erasures, A Little White Shadow (2006).
Richard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. He is the author of the collection Crush, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2004. His second book of poems, War of the Foxes, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2015.
Jean Valentine was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.
Christopher Abani is a Nigerian American and Los Angeles- based author. He says he is part of a new generation of Nigerian writers working to convey to an English-speaking audience the experience of those born and raised in "that troubled African nation".
Mohave or Mojave is the native language of the Mohave people along the Colorado River in northwestern Arizona, southeastern California, and southwestern Nevada. Approximately 70% of the speakers reside in Arizona, while approximately 30% reside in California. It belongs to the River branch of the Yuman language family, together with Quechan and Maricopa.
Bruce Weigl is an American contemporary poet whose work engages profoundly with experience of both Americans and Vietnamese during and after the Vietnam war.
Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, founded in 1972 by Sam Hamill, Tree Swenson, Bill O'Daly, and Jim Gautney, specializing exclusively in the publication of poetry. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington.
Cyrus Cassells is an American poet and professor.
Marilyn Chin (陈美玲) is a prominent Chinese American poet, writer, activist, and feminist, as well as an editor and Professor of English. She is well-represented in major canonical anthologies and textbooks and her work is taught all over the world. Marilyn Chin's work is a frequent subject of academic research and literary criticism. Marilyn Chin has read her poetry at the Library of Congress.
Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
Layli Long Soldier is an Oglala Lakota poet, writer, feminist, artist, and activist.
Mai Der Vang is a Hmong American poet.
Major poetry related events taking place worldwide during 2020 are outlined below under different sections. This includes poetry books released during the year in different languages, major literary awards, poetry festivals and events, besides anniversaries and deaths of renowned poets etc. Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Safiya Sinclair is a Jamaican poet and memoirist. Her debut poetry collection, Cannibal, won several awards, including a Whiting Award for poetry in 2016 and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for poetry in 2017. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Arizona State University.
