February 25, 2008--Poet Laureate Charles Simic has chosen two new voices in poetry, including Monica Youn, author of BARTER, for the 2008 Witter Bynner Fellowships. Simic will introduce Youn and fellow winner Matthew Thorburn on March 6 at the Library of Congress. Youn and Thorburn each will receive a $10,000 fellowship, provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry in conjunction with the Library of Congress.

Thorburn and Youn, both from New York City, will read from their works at 6:45 p.m. on Thursday, March 6, in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, "These fellowships to poets of distinction who as yet are not widely known provide a wonderful way for the Laureate, the Library and the Witter Bynner Foundation to encourage poets and poetry."

In explaining his selections, Simic said, "Monica's work conveys a skeptical, intelligent voice, alert and sharp, delighting as much in sense as in nonsense, engaged by everything from history to comic strips. Youn takes the lyric poem beyond its traditional form, reinvents it and in the process reminds us what imagination at its most playful can accomplish."

Youn, who was raised in Houston, Texas, is an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and an adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University. She is the author of "Barter" (2003). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the "Norton Anthology: Language for a New Century."

Youn has earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton, a master's of philosophy from Oxford and a law degree from Yale. She has received the Rhodes Scholarship and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University.

The Witter Bynner fellowships are to be used to support the writing of poetry. Only two things are asked of the fellows: that they organize a reading in their hometown and participate in a reading and recording session at the Library of Congress. Applications are not taken for thefellowships; the Poet Laureate makes the selection.

The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry was incorporated in 1972 in New Mexico to provide grant support for programs in poetry through nonprofit organizations. Witter Bynner was an influential early-20th-century poet and translator of the Chinese classic "Tao Te Ching," which he named "The Way of Life According to Laotzu." He traveled with D.H. and Frieda Lawrence and proposed to Edna St. Vincent Millay (she accepted, but then they changed their minds). He worked at McClure's Magazine, where he published A.E. Housman for the first time in the United States, and was one of O. Henry's early fans.

Previous Witter Bynner fellows were Carol Muske-Dukes and Carl Phillips (1998), David Gewanter, Heather McHugh and Campbell McGrath (1999), and Naomi Shihab Nye and Joshua Weiner (2000), all appointed by Robert Pinsky; the late Tory Dent and Nick Flynn (2001), appointed by Stanley Kunitz; George Bilgere and Katia Kapovich (2002), and Major Jackson and Rebecca Wee (2003), appointed by Billy Collins; Dana Levin and Spencer Reece (2004), appointed by Louise Gluck; Claudia Emerson and Martin Walls (2005), and Joseph Stroud and Connie Wanek (2006), appointed by Ted Kooser; and Laurie Lamon and David Tucker (2007), appointed by Donald Hall.

For further information on Witter Bynner fellowships and the poetry program at the Library of Congress, visit www.loc.gov/poetry/.