The two new voices in poetry are Whitworth Associate Professor of English Laurie Lamon and newspaperman David Tucker. Each will receive $10,000 fellowships provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry in conjunction with the Library of Congress. According to Hall, Lamon and Tucker “are as different as the two giants of American poetry in the 19th century—Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.”

Lamon, a Whitworth alumna, is the author of the poetry collection The Fork Without Hunger (CavanKerry Press, 2005). She received an Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship in 2005 and a Graves Award in the Humanities in 2002. She was also awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2001 for her poem, “Pain Thinks of the Beautiful Table.”

Tucker, a graduate of the University of Michigan, studied poetry with Robert Hayden. His collection Late for Work (2006) won a Bakeless Prize from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He has worked for Twenty-eight years at leading newspapers, and is a member of the New Jersey Star-Ledger team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.