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Claremont Graduate University has announced the winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given annually to a mid-career poet for a book published in the previous year. At $100,000, the Kingsley Tufts Award is one of the largest monetary poetry prizes in the United States.
The 2013 award has been given to Marianne Boruch of West Lafayette, Indiana, for her collection The Book of Hours, published by Copper Canyon Press. Heidy Steidlmayer of Vacaville, California, received the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her debut collection, Fowling Piece (Tri-Quarterly). The Kate Tufts Award is given annually for a first book by a poet.
“We are delighted to honor these poets and celebrate their achievements,” said Wendy Martin, director of the Tufts Poetry Awards program and vice provost at Claremont Graduate University, in a press release. “These awards will help them gain wider recognition and will sustain their continuing commitment to writing outstanding poetry.”
The winners were selected from a list of finalists for each award. Boruch’s most recent books include the poetry collections Grace, Fallen from (Wesleyan, 2008) and Poems: New and Selected (Oberlin, 2004), and a memoir, The Glimpse Traveler (University of Indiana, 2011). Steidlmayer’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the 2012 Ploughshares John C. Zacharis Award.
Now in its twenty-first year, the Kingsley Tufts award was established at Claremont Graduate University by Kate Tufts to honor the memory of her husband. The award is presented for a work by a poet “who is past the very beginning but has not yet reached the pinnacle of his or her career.” The Kate Tufts Discovery Award was established in 1993 and is given annually for a debut collection.
The winners will be honored at a ceremony at the Garrison Theater in Claremont on Thursday, April 18. David Barber, Kate Gale, Ted Genoways, Linda Gregerson, and Carl Phillips judged.
Timothy Donnelly received the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Award; past winners include Robert Wrigley, Tom Sleigh, Matthea Harvey, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Chase Twichell.
To be considered for next year's awards, books published between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2013, may be submitted by September 15. Visit the Claremont Graduate University website for more information and complete submission guidelines.
The thirty-sixth annual O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships will be held on May 18 at the O. Henry Museum in Austin. Check out first-time competitor Jerzy Gwiazdowski as he wins Punniest of Show with this performance at last year's spoken-word event.
Write an essay about a story or anecdote from your family lore that has never added up. Imagine various details of or revisions to the story that would make it make more sense.
Write a contemporary adaptation of a fairy tale using first-person narration from the point of view of the villain.
Write a poem in the form of a letter to an imaginary friend in which you ask them for help that begins, Dear Friend. Keeping the person or creature or entity you’re writing to in mind, include details and images that reveal your imaginary friend’s characteristics as you craft your entreaty.
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Rebecca McClanahan's poem, which was published in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, will resonate with anyone in Boston later this week for the annual AWP conference and book fair. "Annual Conference: 8,000 Writers Expected" is read by the poet and visualized by Donald Devet.
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Is it typical to give a publisher rights for all media? Is there a standard practice regarding adaptation rights into other media and/or translation rights when initially signing a contract?
I’ve seen contracts that grant the publisher all rights to the book, including all media. Most frequently such contracts are used when there is no agent involved. Sometimes the author signs one because she would rather have someone other than herself responsible for the rights, or because she lacks firsthand knowledge of industry standards. Independent and university presses, which are wonderful for many reasons, are most often responsible for contracts such as these because they publish unagented work and because their rights income is on a smaller scale, so they like to have as many rights as they can. However, at small presses there is not always someone specifically assigned to pursue selling foreign, audio, first-serial, and especially media-subsidiary rights. There are now also other rights to consider because of evolving technology, like e-book rights and enhanced e-book rights. Publishing is undergoing many changes, so it’s a crucial time for authors to protect themselves from contracts that assign rights to a publisher not equipped to exploit them.
