The critics circle gave a dual prize for poetry to August Kleinzahler for “Sleeping It Off in Rapid City” (Farrar, Straus), and Juan Felipe Herrera for “Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems” (University of Arizona Press).
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JUAN FELIPE HERRERA IS THE FIRST CHICANO POET TO WIN ONE OF THE BIG THREE BOOK AWARDS.
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Many Chicano poets have come to look up to Herrera. “For Chicanos, poetry has always been an essential form of expression,” poet Rigoberto González says. “It is our art, our declaration of perspective, but it’s also our cry of protest. Juan Felipe Herrera has the distinction of being one of these political activists who went on to build a career around his talent.” González ranks Herrera among Chicano poetry’s best, along with the recently deceased Abelardo “Lalo” Delgado, Alfred Arteaga, raúlrsalinas, Luis Omar Salinas, and Gloria Anzaldúa, and the “still marching” Lorna Dee Cervantes and Alurista. “Juan Felipe Herrera (and all those Chicano writers I just mentioned) taught me that writing is activism—not documentation.”
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About Me
- Eduardo C. Corral
- Eduardo C. Corral is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from ASU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Post Road. His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation award and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. He's the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review. He won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.
3 comments:
I'm totally thrilled with this. In the meantime, you know they're announcing the Pulitzer finalists and winners on 04/20. You don't think.... Do you?
i'm flattered that you would think i might be a finalist for the pulitzer, but i think i need to publish a book first.
Ha. Unfunny!
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