Poet
Publications & Prizes
The Academy of American Poets awarded Luisa A. Igloria a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship, along with 22 other poets laureate across the nation. In July 2020, she was appointed the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Other honors include the 2019 Crab Orchard Poetry Open Prize for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner; Southern Illinois University Press); the 2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Poetry Chapbook Prize for What is Left of Wings, I Ask (selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); 2nd Prize in the 2018 Bridport Poetry Prize, UK (selected by Daljit Nagra); the 2015 (Inaugural) Resurgence Prize for Poetry (selected by former UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion; Alice Oswald; and Jo Shapcott); the 2014 May Swenson Prize for Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by Mark Doty for Utah State University Press); and The 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize for Juan Luna's Revolver (University of Notre Dame Press).
Other honors include the 2007 49th Parallel Poetry Prize; the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize (selected by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser); the 2006 National Writers Union Poetry Prize(selected by Adrienne Rich); the 2006 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize (Crab Orchard Review); the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry; the 2004 Fugue Poetry Prize(selected by Ellen Bryant Voigt); Finalist, the 2003 Larry Levis Editors Prize for Poetry, The Missouri Review; Finalist, the 2003 Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press); the first Sylvia Clare Brown Fellowship,Ragdale Foundation (2007); two Pushcart Prize nominations; a 1998 Fellowship at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland.
Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, Luisa is also an eleven-time recipient of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in three genres (poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction) and its Hall of Fame distinction; the Palanca award is the Philippines' highest literary distinction.