HomepageEnglish and Creative WritingUrsinus Poets Win Major Honors

Ursinus Poets Win Major Honors

Nzadi Keita and Anna Maria Hong have both recently received honors recognizing their excellence.

Nzadi Keita Keita was named a winner of the 2017 PEW FELLOWSHIP, with a no-strings-attached grant of $75,000 to pursue her muse.  She is a widely acclaimed Philadelphia poet, author of BRIEF EVIDENCE OF HEAVEN, persona poems based on the life of life of abolitionist Anna Murray Douglass, first wife of Frederick Douglass.  Keita is a member of Cave Canem, a Black poetry organization, and has received two prior Leeway Foundation grants for community arts activism.

 

Anna Maria Hong

Hong won two poetry book competitions this summer. Her collection, The Glass Age, won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition and will be published in March of 2018.  Just weeks later, Hong’s second poetry collection, Fablesque, was announced as the winner of Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize for a first or second book of poetry. Fablesque will be published in 2019. Her novella, H & G, which previously won the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s inaugural Clarissa Dalloway Prize, will be published by Sidebrow Books in early 2018.

 

Ursinus director of creative writing Jon Volkmer comments, “I am so proud of our Ursinus poets. For Nzadi Keita, the Pew Fellowships is overdue recognition of her status as a top-flight poet, and, indirectly, a reward for two decades of brilliant teaching of Ursinus students.  Two early book awards in the same month announces to the world that an important poet, Anna Maria Hong, has burst onto the scene.  It is a privilege to be able to work alongside Nzadi and Anna Maria in one of the best undergraduate programs anywhere.”

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