PEN America President Jennifer Egan and this year’s judges—Hari Kunzru, George Elliott Clarke, Alexis Okeowo, Lila Azam Zanganeh, and Viet Thanh Ngyuen—have announced that M. NourbeSe Philip is being honored with the 2020 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, in recognition of her esteemed body of work. The PEN/Nabokov Award is PEN’s most prestigious Career…
It is with great sadness that we learn of the passing of award-winning Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite. Read more at Barbados Today. Kamau Brathwaite was internationally celebrated Barbadian poet, performer, and cultural theorist. Cofounder of the Caribbean Artists Movement, he attended Pembroke College, Cambridge and earned his PhD from the University of Sussex. Brathwaite served…
We are pleased to announce that Citizen Azmari: Making Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv, by Ilana Webster-Kogen is the recipient of Society for Ethnomusicology’s 2019 Publication Prize given by the Special Interest Group of Jewish Music. From the judging committee citation: “Citizen Azmari shines new light on a Jewish people who exist at many margins:…
Today is Canadian Aboriginal Veterans Day. As is true of the First Nations people of Canada, Native Americans enlist in the United States military at a higher rate than their white counterparts. At least 12,000 Native Americans enlisted to fight in WWI, at at time when they did not qualify for United States citizenship. Novelist…
“A friend told me poets are maladjusted souls. Whatever! We have Sandra Simonds on our side, and this new book Atopia is something to give ourselves some proper maladjustments! Here is a poet I can easily imagine from the audience of Plato’s speeches about how great slavery is for the Republic, telling the old man…
A bookseller recently asked us for “proof of the author’s opposition to oppression of West Bank Palestinians.” This prompted us to ask poet Yonatan Berg’s about his views. His response follows here. Yehuda Amichai, one of our greatest poets, wrote: “From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring. The…
Priscilla Page was co-editor and contributor to Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Play by Joy Harjo and A Circle of Responses. The play was inspired by Harjo’s desire to see Native Americans accurately depicted on the stage, in the face of inaccurate contemporary depictions found in the likes of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Cry,…
For Immediate Release—June 19, 2019 Joy Harjo, published by W.W. Norton and Wesleyan University Press, represented by Blue Flower Arts, has been named Poet Laureate of the United States. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. She is the first Native American to serve as US Poet Laureate. Read the full press release…
Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce we have secured the world rights to The Age of Phillis, a new volume of poetry by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who is represented by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company. The Age of Phillis is the result of over a decade of research and contemplation by Jeffers. She draws…
We celebrate the Governor Ella Grasso’s 100th one hundredth birthday, May 10, 2019. A ceremony marking the late Connecticut governor’s 100th birthday will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the Old Judiciary Committee Room at the Connecticut State Capitol. From the introduction of Ella Grasso: Connecticut’s Pioneering Governor, by Jon E. Purmont Her life reflects…
