Awards & Honors
Deni Apriyani, 27, an Indonesian domestic worker won the 2017 Migrant Worker Poetry Competition in Singapore, worth S$500 (US$370) for her English-language poem titled “Further Away,” about her abusive marriage. She said she was inspired to write the poem after an encounter with a stranger in her hometown of Indramayu, West Java, The Straits Times reported.
Claremont Graduate University has announced the winners of the 2018 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards. Patricia Smith won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her collection, Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press). Donika Kelly won the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her debut collection, Bestiary (Graywolf Press).
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 was awarded to The British author Kazuo Ishiguro who was born in Nagasaki, Japan. Ishiguro, author of novels including The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, was praised by the Swedish Academy (https://www.nobelprize.org) for novels which “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world” and were driven by a “great emotional force.”
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is named the winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. George Saunders is famous for his short stories and Lincoln in the Bardoisis, his first full-length. The 58-year-old New York resident, born in Texas, is the second American author to win the prize in its 49-year history.
The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2017, arguably the most coveted award in poetry goes to Ocean Vuong’s debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds. The Vietnamese-born poet now lives in Massachusetts. He has won a host of awards for the collection, including Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Vuong won £25,000 prize money, an increased amount on previous years due to the TS Eliot Prize celebrating its 25th year. Previous winners include Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Oswald and Seamus Heaney.
The 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author) was given to Tyehimba Jess for his book, Olio. The prize money was Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000). Tyehimba Jess was born 1965 in Detroit. Jennifer Freeley of South Lyon, Michigan, won the 2017 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize for her translation from the Chinese of Xi Xi’s poetry collection, Not Written Words (Zephyr Press). She received $5,000. The annual award is given for a book of poetry translated from an Asian language into English and published in the previous year. Joaquin Zihuatanejo of Dallas won the 2017 Anhinga–Robert Dana Prize for his poetry collection, Arsonist. Carmen Maria Machado of Philadelphia won the 2018 Bard Fiction Prize for her story collection, Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press, 2017). She received $30,000 and a one-semester appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College. Julie Lekstrom Himes of Marblehead, Massachusetts, won the 2017 First Novel Prize for Mikhail and Margarita (Europa Editions). Caitlin Doyle of Cincinnati won the seventh annual Frost Farm Prize for her poem “Wish.” She received $1,000 and a scholarship to give a reading at the Frost Farm Poetry Conference at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire.
Notable Departures in 2018
We are barely three months into 2018, having lost many champions of the written word. Here, we pay tribute to some of them.
One of the leading Nepali language short story writers, Manu Brajaki passed away in Kathmandu at the age of 75. His notable books include Timri Swasni ra Ma (Your Wife and I) and Annapurnako Bhoj, (Annapurna’s Feast). Also, Award-winning Darjeeling-based fiction writer, Indra Bahadur Rai, died in March. He launched several literary movements including Tesro Aayam, and Lela Lekha.
Famous Indian poet Anwar Jalalpuri, who translated Bhagwat Gita and Gitanjali into Urdu, passed away in Lucknow on January 2 at the trauma centre of King George’s Medical University. Anwar Jalalpuri was born in the Gasba of Jalalpur in Uttar Pradesh in 1947.
American poet and educator, author of four poetry books, most recently, Stay Illusion, the finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle prize, Lucie Brock-Broido died at age 61. She directed the creative writing program at Harvard and the poetry division of Columbia University’s writing program.
Nicanor Parra, one of Chile’s most notable poets, has died in the city of Santiago. He was 103 years old. Parra introduced the concept of “anti-poetry,” opting for a grounded, blunt and “darkly comical” style instead of traditional lyrical forms. (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) Walter Skold, the founder of the Dead Poets Society of America, who visited the final resting places of more than 600 poets, died Saturday, Jan 20, 2018, of a heart attack, according to The Associated Press. He was 57. British writer Penny Vincenzi, whose stories of romance, rivalry and family secrets topped best-seller lists, has died. She was 78. Jenny Joseph, whose poem Warning was twice voted Britain’s favourite poem, has died at the age of 85. It is perhaps best known for its opening lines: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple / With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.” (7 May 1932 – 8 January 2018).
Richard Murphy, the distinguished Irish poet and member of Aosdána, has died, aged 90. (6 August 1927 – 30 January 2018). South African poet and political activist, Keorapetse William Kgositsile, also known as ‘Bra Willie’ has died. He was 79. In 1996, he was inaugurated as South Africa’s National Poet Laureate and was actively involved in the fight against Apartheid. From 1962 to 1975, he lived in exile in the United States, where he gained success and quickly became a household name. My Name is Afrika, which he published in 1971, made him one of Africa’s leading poets. (19 September 1938 – 3 January 2018.) Pakistan’s renowned columnist and poet Munir Ahmed Qureshi, more popularly referred to as Munnu Bhai, passed away on Friday, at the age of 84. Prince Henrik of Denmark, the husband of the Queen of Denmark and a published poet, has died at 83. Stanford poetry scholar, humanist Michael Pennock Predmore died at 79. A professor emeritus who taught at Stanford for over 30 years, inspired generations of students. He was known for his analysis of Juan Ramón Jiménez’s poems.
with input from the Agencies
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