April 22, 2009--Graywolf Press is pleased to announce that Linda Gregg is the recipient of the third annual Jackson Poetry Prize of Poets & Writers, Inc. The $50,000 prize honors an American poet of exceptional talent who has published at least one book of recognized literary merit but has not yet received major national acclaim. The award is designed to provide what all poets need--time and the encouragement to write.

Ms. Gregg was selected by three esteemed judges: the poets Brenda Hillman, Edward Hirsch, and Charles Simic. There was no application process. Poets were nominated by a panel of their peers who will remain anonymous.
The judges described Ms. Gregg’s poems as “charting human emotion at its most risky, leading the reader at times into a metaphysical or mystical utterance, and at times into a plain-spoken observation of a human world. Her poems are wise and beautiful.”

 April 14, 2009, Chicago—Graywolf Press is delighted to announce that Fanny Howe has been awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. The Poetry Foundation announced the annual award of $100,000 today, and it will be presented to Howe at the Pegasus Awards ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Tuesday, May 19.

In announcing the Lilly Prize, Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine, said, “Fanny Howe is a religious writer whose work makes you more alert and alive to the earth, an experimental writer who can break your heart. Live in her world for a while, and it can change the way you think of yours.”

Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition, the Ruth Lilly Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation’s largest literary prizes.

March 30, 2009—Graywolf Press is pleased to announce that The End by Salvatore Scibona has been named a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award of the Ohioana Library. “Ohio authors are amazing! The variety, and depth of topics and characters included in this year’s array of book award finalists represent the finest in the literature of our time. We are a proud to recognize the authors from all areas of our state who have published outstanding books this year.” said Linda Hengst, executive director of the Ohioana Library. “We receive 700 to 900 books a year all of which become eligible for the book awards, so the authors of the books selected as finalists should feel truly honored.”

The book awards are given in five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, juvenile literature, and “about Ohio/Ohioans.” Many of the book award finalists will be at the 3rd annual Ohioana Book Festival on May 9th. Ohioana will announce the winners in each category near the end of August, and recipients will be honored at the annual Ohioana Day Awards Ceremony and Luncheon on Saturday, October 17, 2009.

Other finalists in the fiction category include Brock Clarke (An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England), P.F. Kluge (Gone Tomorrow), Erin McGraw (The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard), Toni Morrison (A Mercy), and Curtis Sittenfelt (American Wife).

A complete list of finalists in all book categories can be found at the Ohiona Library's website.

March 25, 2009--Graywolf Press is pleased to announce that All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems by Linda Gregg has won the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award.

James Longenbach, this year’s judge, writes of the winning poet:

March 17, 2009--Graywolf Press is happy to announce that Salvatore Scibona has won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award for his debut novel, The End. The award, now in its ninth year, was presented at a ceremony last evening by Library President Paul LeClerc. The ceremony was held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the landmark Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

Ethan Hawke, one of the founders of the award, was joined onstage by actors Billy Crudup, and Zoe Kazan to read excerpts from each of the finalists’ works. The four other finalists for the award were Jon Fasman (The Unpossessed City), Rivka Galchen (Atmospheric Disturbances), Sana Krasikov (One More Year), and Zachary Mason (The Lost Books of the Odyssey).

“In the nine years since its founding the Young Lions Fiction Award has called attention to nominated works by forty-six talented authors,” said Library President Paul LeClerc. “It is indeed a privilege to celebrate and support young writers who are forming the future landscape of American cultural expression.”

February 11, 2009--Graywolf Press will be in Chicago from February 11-14 for the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference and Bookfair. All readings and events will be held in the Hilton Chicago. Please visit us at booth #124 in the Northwest Hall, or join us at any of the following events:

Thursday, February 12, 1:30-2:45 PM
Continental C, Lobby Level
Another World Instead: Readings from the Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947
Featuring Fred Marchant, Linda Pastan, Kim Stafford, Jennifer Barber, Kevin Bowen, and Mary Szybist

Thursday, February 12, 3:00-4:15 PM
Grand Ballroom, Second Floor
A Tribute to Albert Goldbarth
Featuring Rick Mulkey, Stephen Corey, Denise Duhamel, Barbara Hamby, Lia Purpura, and Graywolf Press Senior Editor Jeffrey Shotts

Friday, February 13, 1:30-2:45 PM
International Ballroom South, Second Floor
Graywolf Press 35th Anniversary Reading
Featuring Jeffrey Shotts, Jeffery Renard Allen, Eula Biss, Robert Boswell, Katie Ford, and D. A. Powell

Friday, February 13, 4:30-5:45 PM
Boulevard Room A, B, C, Second Floor
A Tribute to a Stranger: Thomas James
Featuring Mark Doty, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Tracy K. Smith, and Mark Wunderlich

Saturday, February 14, 4:30-5:45 PM
Wiliford C, Third Floor
A Tribute to Jason Shinder
Featuring Tony Hoagland, Marie Howe, Sophie Cabot Black, Victoria Redel, Tree Swenson, and Elise Paschen

For more details about these events and for a complete conference schedule, please visit the AWP website.

January 20, 2009--Poet Elizabeth Alexander captured the spirit of Barack Obama's historic inauguration today when she read the poem "Praise Song for the Day." Barack Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Graywolf Press will release a commemorative chapbook edition of the poem on February 6, 2009.

Elizabeth Alexander crafted the poem for the occasion, drawing inspiration from poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, and Walt Whitman. Alexander is one of our nation's most eloquent poets, and she spoke at the most closely watched inauguration in U.S. history. Alexander is the fourth poet in United States history to read at a presidential inauguration. Previous inaugural poets were Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, and Maya Angelou and Miller Williams at the inaugurations of William Jefferson Clinton.

Watch Elizabeth Alexander on The Colbert Report.

December 11, 2008—Graywolf Press and Cave Canem Foundation, North America’s premier home for black poetry, are pleased to announce Cave Canem's 2009 competition for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, an annual first book award dedicated to the discovery of exceptional manuscripts by African American poets. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa will serve as final judge. In addition to publication by Graywolf Press in 2010, the competition winner will receive $1,000, 15 copies of the book and a feature reading.

The National Poetry Series is pleased to announce that Lawrence Venuti has been awarded the 2008 Robert Fagles Translation Prize. Mr. Venuti’s project, Edward Hopper, is a translation of Catalan poet Ernest Farrés, and will be published in 2009 by Graywolf Press. Acclaimed poet Richard Howard served as judge for this year’s award.

The Joint Congressional Committeee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced today that Graywolf poet Elizabeth Alexander will read at President Obama's swearing in next month.

Read more at the Washington Post

New Graywolf Press Submission Guidelines

Effective January 1, 2009, Graywolf Press's submission guidelines will change drastically. If you intend to submit your work for possible publication, please review the new guidelines here.

New Graywolf Press Submission Guidelines

Effective January 1, 2009, Graywolf Press's submission guidelines will change drastically. If you intend to submit your work for possible publication, please review the new guidelines here.

October 30, 2008--Graywolf Press is delighted to announce that Benjamin Percy, author of Refresh, Refresh, has been presented with a 2008 Whiting Writers Award for emerging writers. The awards, which are $50,000 each, an increase of $10,000 from previous years, have been given annually since 1985 to emerging writers of exceptional talent and promise.

Since its inception in 1985, the program has awarded more than $6 million to 240 poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and playwrights. Among the past recipients who have later achieved prominence in their fields are Jonathan Franzen, William T. Vollman, Mary Karr, Colson Whitehead, Tony Kushner, Jeffrey Eugenides, August Wilson, Jorie Graham, Cristina Garcia, and David Foster Wallace.

The 2008 recipients were announced at a ceremony at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York on Wednesday, October 29. Dr. Robert L. Belknap, President of the Foundation, and trustee Kate Douglas Torrey presented the ten writers with their awards. Other writers recognized at the ceremony include Mischa Berlinski, Rick Hilles, Donovan Hohn, Douglas Kearney, Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Muñoz, Dael Orlandersmith, Julie Sheehan, and Lysley Tenorio.

October 15, 2008—Graywolf Press is thrilled to announce that The End by Salvatore Scibona has been selected as a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award in the fiction category. The announcement was made this morning at the famed Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago by bestselling author Scott Turow.

The winner in each of the four categories—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature—will be announced at the 59th National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Wednesday, November 19. Each winner receives $10,000 plus a bronze statue; each Finalist receives a bronze medal and a $1,000 cash award.

The End, which details a single day in 1953 as lived by six people at an Ohio carnival, has earned Scibona favorable comparisons to William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, among others. It is Scibona's first novel.

We mourn the passing of our friend Jason Shinder. He is missed.

CODA

And now I know what most deeply connects us

after that summer so many years ago,
and it isn’t poetry, although it is poetry,

and it isn’t illness, although we have that in common,

and it isn’t gratitude for every moment,
even the terrifying ones, even the physical pain,

though we are grateful, and it isn’t even death,

though we are halfway through
it, or even the way you describe the magnificence

of being alive, catching a glimpse,

in the store window, of your blowing hair and chapped lips,
though it is beautiful, it is; but it is

that you’re my friend out here on the far reaches

of what humans can find out about each other.

—Jason Shinder

April 16, 2008--Graywolf Press is pleased to announce that Charles Baxter has won the Minnesota Book Award in the General Nonfiction category for his book THE ART OF SUBTEXT: BEYOND PLOT. The 2008 Minnesota Book Awards, now in its 20th year, were presented in a ceremony on April 12th. Fellow Graywolf author Leslie Adrienne Miller was a finalist in the poetry category for THE RESURRECTION TRADE.

The Book Awards gala will be broadcast on the TPT-MN channel in late May or early June. Check your local listings for the channel, date and time of broadcast.

In other news, Graywolf Press author Robin Hemley (TURING LIFE INTO FICTION, NOLA) has been named a 2008 general nonfiction fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.