Foundation Awards
Awarded annually, the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honors a living US poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition. Established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly, the prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets.
Awards
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships
Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism
Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry
Young People's Poet Laureate
2023 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize Recipient
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2023
Kimiko Hahn is the author of 10 books of poetry, including Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); Brain Fever (Norton, 2014); Toxic Flora (Norton, 2010); The Narrow Road to the...
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In 2023, the Poetry Foundation introduced a new, annual award bestowed in recognition of commitment and extraordinary work in poetry and the literary arts through administration, advocacy, education, publishing, or service. The Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry recognizes that service to poetry and its communities comes in a variety of forms. The award includes a cash prize of $25,000, to be awarded annually.
Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry
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2023
Poet, educator, and memoirist Toi Derricotte has written six collections of poetry: "I": New and Selected Poems (2019), a 2019 National Book Awards finalist; The Undertaker’s Daughter (2011); Captivity (1989); Natural Birth (1983);...
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2023
Poet and cofounder of Cave Canem Cornelius Eady’s published collections include Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Omnation Press, 1986), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of...
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Five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships are awarded annually to young poets. Established in 1989 by the Indianapolis philanthropist Ruth Lilly and increased in 2013 with a gift from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund, the fellowships are intended to support exceptional US poets between 21 and 31 years of age, prioritizing poets who have not had substantial institutional support in their careers thus far. In 2023, the award increased from $25,800 to $27,000.
2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows
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2023 Fellow
Bhion Achimba (they/he) grew up in rural southeastern Nigeria and came to the US as a Scholar-at-Risk fellow at Harvard University. Their manuscript Cantos from the Crossing won the 2023...
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2023 Fellow
Roda Avelar (she/they) is a trans woman poet from Fresno, California. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of California Riverside, where she taught creative writing and...
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2023 Fellow
Ariana Benson (she/they) is a southern Black poet born in Norfolk, Virginia. Their debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023), won the 2022 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Benson has...
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2023 Fellow
Chrysanthemum (she/her) is a poet, a performance artist, and a public historian. She is the winner of a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and was a Kundiman...
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2023 Fellow
Poet, designer, and musician Willie Lee Kinard III (he/they) earned a BFA from the University of South Carolina and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. His publications include Orders...
Appointed every two years, the title of Young People’s Poet Laureate is awarded to a poet in recognition of a career devoted to writing exceptional poetry for young readers while working to instill a lifelong love of poetry among the nation’s developing readers. This two year appointment comes with a $25,000/year stipend as well as additional programmatic funds in support of a project that promotes poetry to young people and their families, teachers, and librarians.
Announcements
September 8, 2022
Awarded annually, the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism seeks to honor an outstanding book-length work of criticism published in the US in the prior calendar year.In 2023, the award increased from $7,500 to $10,000.
2023 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism
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2023 Award Recipient
Douglas Kearney is the 2023 recipient for his book Optic Subwoof, a collection of talks Kearney presented as part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. Through an avant-garde sensibility, this collection explores the intersections of Black poetics, violence, and performance.
Kearney is an associate professor of English at the University of Minnesota and the author of eight books ranging from poetry to essays to libretti. Among his honors are fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and McKnight, as well as receiving the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Minnesota Book Award, the Whiting Award, and the CLMP Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. -
Finalists
The 2023 Finalists were Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb for Auden and the Muse of History, Carl Phillips for My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing, and Katherine Rundell for Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne.
Thank you to the 2023 judges: Elizabeth LeRud, Kevin Quashie, and Gillian White.
2022 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism
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2022 Award Recipient
Kevin Quashie is the 2022 recipient for his book Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being, which draws on Black feminist literary texts, including work by poets Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, and June Jordan.
Quashie teaches Black cultural and literary studies and is a professor in the department of English at Brown University. Among his honors are a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as citations for teaching excellence from Brown University and Smith College.
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Finalists
The 2022 Criticism finalists were Anahid Nersessian for Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse (The University of Chicago Press) and Syd Zolf for No One's Witness: A Monstrous Poetics (Duke University Press).