Literary Awards by Year
Sarah Lindsay
2009 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1958, the poet Sarah Lindsay works as a copy editor and proofreader in Greensboro, North Carolina. She is the author of Primate Behavior (Grove Press Poetry Series, 1997) which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Mount Clutter (Grove Press Poetry Series, 2002); and Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). A graduate of St. Olaf College and the UNC-Greensboro MFA program in creative writing, she apprenticed for a few years at Unicorn Press, learning to set type, print and bind books by hand. She plays the cello with friends in a quartet that is sometimes a trio or quintet, and lives with her husband and small dog among toppling piles of books. Sarah received the M. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2009.
Sarah Lindsay Bio and Cross Links
...HideValzhyna Mort
2009 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus (former Soviet Union) in 1981. Her first collection, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes, was published prior to her moving to the U.S. in 2005. Her first US poetry collection is Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), co-translated by the husband-and-wife team of Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Pultizer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright. The book has been translated into Swedish and Russian. It is the first Belarusian-English poetry book ever published in the U.S.
Mort received the Crystal of Vilenica award in Slovenia in 2005 and the Burda Poetry Prize in Germany in 2008. She has been a resident poet at Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Germany, and has received a fellowshiip at Gaude Polonia, Warsaw, Poland. Her English translations of Eastern-European poets are included in the anthology, New European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008). Valzhyna currently teaches at the University of Baltimore and her next collection, written in English, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.
Valzhyna Mort Bio and Cross Links
...HideAugust Kleinzahler
2008 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
August Kleinzahler’s poetry is described by the New York Times as “a modernist swirl of sex, surrealism, urban life and melancholy with a jazzy backbeat. His personality combines Allen Ginsberg’s goofball charm and Norman Mailer’s inveterate pugnacity.” He has published eight books of poetry, including A Calendar of Airs (1978); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (1995); and in 2003, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.‘s Forward Prize in Poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is Sleeping It Off in Rapid City. He is also the author of a book of prose, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004).
His poems have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, Poetry, Harper’s, and The Paris Review. A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler is the recipient of many awards, including a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 2008. Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco. On the title of poet, Kleinzahler says, “I don’t like to call myself a poet. Most poets are shiftless, no-account fools.”
August Kleinzahler Bio and Cross Links
...HideCharles D'Ambrosio
2008 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Charles D’Ambrosio is from the Pacific Northwest. He has an MFA from Iowa where he currently teaches writing. His short stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker and other literary journals and have been selected for inclusion in numerous anthologies. His first collection, The Point (1995), was a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2005, he published a brilliant collection of essays called Orphans. Following the release in 2006 of his second book of short fiction, The Dead Fish Museum, D’Ambrosio received the Whiting Award and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the collection was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
Charles D'Ambrosio Bio and Cross Links
...HideKatie Ford
2008 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Katie Ford is the author of Deposition (Graywolf Press) and Colosseum (Graywolf Press, 2008). In 2008 she received a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poets & Writers. She has taught at Loyola University, Reed College, and now at Franklin and Marshall College. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Katie Ford Bio and Cross Links
...HideIlya Kaminsky
2008 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, in the former Soviet Union, in 1977, and immigrated in 1993 to the United States where his family was granted political asylum. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (2004), which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. In 2008 he received a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Kaminsky teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University.
Ilya Kaminsky Bio and Cross Links
...HideGlenn Patterson
2008 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1961, and holds an MA in Creative Writing from East Anglia University, England. He is the author of seven novels including Burning Your Own (1988), for which he was awarded the Rooney Prize and a Betty Trask first novel prize, The International (1999), Number 5 (2003), That Which Was (2004), and The Third Party (2007). A collection of his journalism was published as Lapsed Protestant in 2006. In 2005 he was elected to Aosdána, which recognizes artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. A memoir, Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times, has just been published in the UK and Canada.
Glenn Patterson Bio and Cross Links
...HidePhilip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith
2008 Lannan Literary Award for Notable BookLiving with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith by Philip Kitcher
“In a time of strident pronouncements on the intersection of science and religion, Kitcher has introduced a calm and humane voice.” — H. Allen Orr, New York Review of Books
Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. An eminent philosopher, he is the author of many books on philosophy, science, literature, and music, including Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism; The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities; Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Knowledge; Science, Truth, and Democracy; In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology; and Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner’s Ring. His most recent book is Joyce’s Kaleidoscope: An Invitation to Finnegan’s Wake.
Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith Bio and Cross Links
...HideJohn Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
2008 Lannan Literary Award for Notable BookBlack Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray
“Black Mass… is a limpidly argued and finely written synthesis of Gray’s thinking over the decade.” —John Banville, The Guardian
John Gray is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern and False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. A regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, he is an emeritus professor at the London School of Economics.
John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia Bio and Cross Links
...HideSheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
2008 Lannan Literary Award for Notable BookDemocracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
by Sheldon S. Wolin
“…a new, comprehensive diagnosis of our failings as a democratic polity by one of our most seasoned and respected political philosophers.” — Chalmers Johnson
Sheldon S. Wolin is Professor of Politics (emeritus), Princeton University. He has previously taught at Oberlin College and the University of California at Berkeley and served as Eastman Professor at Oxford University. He was founding editor of the journal Democracy. His other publications include The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution and Tocqueville: Between Two Worlds.
Anne Stevenson
2007 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award
After more than 40 years living in Britain, the American lyric poet Anne Stevenson “has never lost that sense of being on the edge of things, artistically and geographically (and) that is where the clarity and perspective of her art come from” according to England’s Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. Much admired in poetry circles on both sides of the Atlantic and often cited as a role model for women poets, she has published 17 volumes of poetry noted for their musical quality.
Anne Stevenson Bio and Cross Links
...HideA. L. Kennedy
2007 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
A. L. Kennedy was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1965 and lives in Glasgow. Her books include three collections of stories, six novels, and two works of nonfiction. Since the publication of her first collection of short fiction, Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (1991), Kennedy has been acclaimed for her innovative voice. Other titles include So I Am Glad (1995), Everything You Need (1999), Indelible Acts: Stories (2004), and Paradise (2005). Her latest novel, Day (2007), is set during and after World War II. She has received many literary prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award, and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. Kennedy has been a long-time columnist for The Guardian newspaper, a judge for the Booker and Orange Prizes, a journalist and reviewer, and a university lecturer. Of fiction she has said, “It is the form that proves most deeply that other human beings are as human as we are.”
A. L. Kennedy Bio and Cross Links
...HideSusan Straight
2007 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Susan Straight’s novels include I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots (1993), Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights (1994), The Gettin Place (1996), and Highwire Moon (2001), which was a finalist for The National Book Award. Her essays have appeared in Harper’s, salon.com, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Straight’s latest novel, A Million Nightingales (2007), continues her singularly beautiful exploration of race in America. Her short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s and Zoetrope, among other publications. She has been awarded the California Book Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Best American Short Story Award. Straight was born in Riverside, California, and lives there with her three daughters. She is professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.
Susan Straight Bio and Cross Links
...HideMike Davis
2007 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Mike Davis was born in Fontana, California, 60 miles east of Los Angeles in 1946, and is a veteran of 1960’s civil rights and anti-war movements. From his first book, Prisoners of the American Dream (1986), about unionism in the United States, to his most recent, Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (2007), Davis’ fearless writing in 18 books shines a fresh light on economic, social, environmental, and political injustice. Some of his other books include City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Magical Urbanism, Planet of Slums, Dead Cities, In Praise of Barbarians, and No One is Illegal. He is currently working on a book about climate change, water, and power in the U.S. West and northern Mexico. A former meat cutter and long-distance truck driver, Davis has been a fellow at the Getty Institute and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998. He teaches at the University of California, Irvine.
Mike Davis Bio and Cross Links
...HidePaula Gunn Allen
2007 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Paula Gunn Allen, of Laguna, Sioux and Lebanese descent, is a literary critic, poet, and novelist, and a noted scholar of Native American literature. During a long and distinguished academic career, she edited numerous seminal texts including The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in Native American Traditions (1986) and Spider Woman’s Granddaughters (1990) as well as works on poetry and critical essays on Native American literature. She retired from her position as Professor of English/Creative Writing/American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1999.
Paula Gunn Allen Bio and Cross Links
...HideDaniel Alarcón
2007 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Daniel Alarcón’s fiction and nonfiction have been published in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper’s and elsewhere. He is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning monthly magazine based in his native Lima, Peru. His story collection, War by Candlelight, was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. The British journal Granta recently named him one of the Best Young American Novelists. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship (2001), a Whiting Award (2004), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007). He lives in Oakland, California, and his first novel, Lost City Radio, was published in February 2007.
Daniel Alarcón Bio and Cross Links
...HideEdie Meidav
2007 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Edie Meidav’s first novel, The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon (2001), grew out of her time in Sri Lanka on a Fulbright Scholarship. Her second, Crawl Space (2005), is currently being adapted for film. Her work has received a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, the Kafka Award for Best Novel by an American Woman, an Editor’s Choice citation by The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and elsewhere, and, most recently, the Bard Fiction Prize for Writers Under 40. She lives with her family in upstate New York where she is a visiting writer at Bard College.
Edie Meidav Bio and Cross Links
...HideDinaw Mengestu
2007 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980 he immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled the communist revolution in Ethiopia two years before. A graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction, Mengestu has written for many publications. He recently reported stories for Harper’s and Jane magazine, profiling a young woman who was kidnapped and forced to become a soldier in the brutal war in Uganda, and for Rolling Stone on the tragedy in Darfur. His first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (titled Children of the Revolution in Britain), has been nominated for The Guardian First Book Award in the U.K. and the Prix Femina Étranger in France, and earned him a place as one of the U.S. National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for 2007. He is also the recipient of a 2006 fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Dinaw Mengestu Bio and Cross Links
...HideSinéad Morrissey
2007 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1972, grew up in Belfast, and holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. She has published three collections of poetry: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002), and The State of the Prisons (2005). Her awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award, and the Michael Hartnett Prize for Poetry. She has twice been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Sinéad Morrissey Bio and Cross Links
...HideJeremy Scahill
2007 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Jeremy Scahill is an international journalist who has reported from post-invasion Iraq, from the former Yugoslavia where he covered the 1999 NATO bombing, and from post-Katrina Louisiana where he exposed the presence of Blackwater mercenaries. His reporting sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. He is a correspondent for the national radio and television show Democracy Now! and a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007) is his first book.
Jeremy Scahill Bio and Cross Links
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