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 Cave Canem Poetry Prize was inaugurated in 1999, when Rita Dove selected Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000), by Natasha Trethewey. Ms. Trethewey’s most recent book, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Subsequent Cave Canem Poetry Prize winners include Major Jackson for Leaving Saturn (The University of Georgia Press, 2002), selected by Al Young; Lyrae Van Clief‐Stefanon for Black Swan (The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), selected by Marilyn Nelson; Tracy K. Smith for The Body's Question (Graywolf Press, 2003), selected by Kevin Young; Kyle Dargan for The Listening (The University of Georgia Press, 2004), selected by Quincy Troupe; Amber Flora Thomas for Eye of Water (The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), selected by Harryette Mullen; Constance Quarterman Bridges for Lions Donʹt Eat Us (Graywolf Press, 2006), selected by Sonia Sanchez; Dawn Lundy Martin for A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering (The University of Georgia Press, 2007), selected by Carl Phillips; and, most recently, Ronaldo Wilson for Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and The White Man, selected by Claudia Rankine and published by The University of Pittsburgh Press in 2008.

Yusef Komunyakaa is the critically acclaimed author of 14 books of poetry, including Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1; Copacetic; Dien Cai Dau; Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977‐1989, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize; Talking Dirty to the Gods; and Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems. His latest book of poems, Warhorses, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2008. His prose is collected in Blues Notes: Essays, Interviews & Commentaries (University of Michigan Press, 2000), and he co‐edited The Jazz Poetry Anthology (with J. A. Sascha Feinstein, 1991). He also co‐translated The Insomnia of Fire, by Nguyen Quang Thieu (with Martha Collins), and has written dramatic works, including Gilgamesh: A Verse Play (Wesleyan University Press, 2006). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his honors include the 2004 Shelley Memorial Award, the 2001 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Hanes Poetry Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He is Professor and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.

Founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the under‐ representation of African American poets in MFA programs and writing workshops, Cave Canem is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. The organization has grown from an initial gathering of 27 poets to become an influential movement with a renowned faculty and a high‐achieving fellowship of 272 poets residing in 34 states. Its programs include a week‐long summer retreat, first and second book prizes, a Legacy Conversation series, writing workshops, publications and national readings. Such renowned poets as Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips and Sonia Sanchez number among the organization’s faculty and judges. Cave Canem fellows have over 150 books in print across several genres and have received many prestigious awards—Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowships and the Whiting Writers’ Award, among others. To date, the organization has published Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (The University of Georgia Press, 2007). For more information, go to www.cavecanempoets.org.

Founded by Scott Walker in 1974, today, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, is considered one of the nation's leading nonprofit publishers. The press inaugurated its list with Instructions to the Double, by Tess Gallagher, and has since expanded to publish novels, short stories, memoirs, essays and poetry; and has discovered and/or promoted such writers as Elizabeth Alexander,
Charles Baxter, Sven Birkerts, Linda Gregg, Eamon Grennan, Tony Hoagland, Jane Kenyon, William Kittredge, Carl Phillips, William Stafford, David Treuer and Brenda Ueland. A commitment to quality and a willingness to embrace or invent new models has kept Graywolf at the forefront of the small press movement.

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