Claremont Graduate University announces finalists for the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is pleased to announce this year’s finalists for the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The awards are among the world’s most generous and distinguished prizes for books of poetry.
The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award is given annually for a book by a poet who is past the very beginning but has not yet reached the pinnacle of his or her career. Finalists for 2015 are:
• Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Knopf). Brock-Broido is director of poetry in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. Her previous books include Trouble in Mind, The Master Letters, and A Hunger.
• Angie Estes, Enchantée (Oberlin College Press). Estes is on the faculty of Ashland University’s low residency MFA program. The author of four previous books, her 2009 Tryst was selected as one of two finalists for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.
• Laura Kasischke, The Infinitesimals (Copper Canyon Press). Kasischke is professor of English and Literature at the University of Michigan. She has published nine previous collections of poetry and nine novels. Space, In Chains won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.
• Mark Wunderlich, The Earth Avails (Graywolf Press). Wunderlich teaches literature at Bennington College. He is the author of two previous poetry collections, Voluntary Servitude and The Anchorage.
• Kevin Young, Book of Hours (Knopf). Young is professor of creative writing and English at Emory University. He is the author of seven previous books of poetry including Jelly Roll: A Blues, which was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award.
The Kate Tufts Discovery Award is presented annually for a first book by a poet of genuine promise. Finalists for 2015 are:
• David J. Daniels, Clean (Four Way Books). Daniels is poetry editor of Pebble Lake Review and teaches at the University of Denver. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best of the Net 2012, Kenyon Review, and Pleiades.
• Hailey Leithauser, Swoop (Graywolf Press). Leithauser worked most recently as a reference librarian at the Department of Energy. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, the Gettysburg Review, and Poetry.
• Jamaal May, Hum (Alice James Books). May is a poet, editor, and filmmaker who has taught poetry in public schools. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Believer, and The Kenyon Review.
• Roger Reeves, King Me (Copper Canyon Press). Reeves is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His work has appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House.
• Brandon Som, The Tribute Horse (Nightboat Books). Som is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Indiana Review, Black Warrior Review, and Octopus Magazine.
The panel of final judges were Wendy Martin, director of the Tufts Poetry Awards; David Barber, poet and poetry editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Kate Gale, poet, novelist, and managing editor of Red Hen Press; Stephen Burt, literary critic and English professor at Harvard University; and Chase Twichell, chair of the judging committee and past winner of the Kingsley Tufts award.
“There were many outstanding submissions for the Tufts Awards this year, and we are delighted to honor these accomplished finalists whose poetry encompasses an extraordinary range of voices and diverse perspectives,” Martin said.
Winners will be announced in late February and recognized during a ceremony at Claremont Graduate University in April.
Afaa Michael Weaver, of Somerville, Massachusetts, received last year’s Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for The Government of Nature (University of Pittsburgh Press). Yona Harvey, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for Hemming the Water (Four Way Books).
The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, now in its 23rd year, was established at Claremont Graduate University by Kate Tufts to honor the memory of her husband, who held executive positions in the Los Angeles Shipyards and wrote poetry as his avocation.
The Kate Tufts Discovery Award was launched in 1993.
About Claremont Graduate University
Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is the graduate university of the Claremont Colleges. Our five academic schools conduct leading-edge research and award masters and doctoral degrees in 24 disciplines. Because the world’s problems are not simple nor easily defined, diverse faculty and students research and study across the traditional discipline boundaries to create new and practical solutions for the major problems plaguing our world. A Southern California based graduate school devoted entirely to graduate research and study, CGU boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio.