Some things that caught our attention this week.

• David Kirby, poet and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State, received a lifetime achievement award for writing from the Florida Humanities Council. His latest book of poems, Get Up, Please, was published this year by LSU Press. “The only two organizations I know of that give a lifetime achievement award are the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the Florida Humanities Council, so I consider this award the equivalent of an Oscar,” Kirby said.

• Amy Stolls, Literature Director for the National Endowment for the Arts, reflects on her time at this year’s AWP Conference & Bookfair. “It’s daunting to be faced with hundreds of specific conversations in one place, in one city, at one time, and to try and step back and make sense of what’s happening overall, to identify trends and trouble spots,” she said. “The need for more diverse writers and books and staff, the challenge of publishing in the digital age, the desire to collect and share data – these are issues that come readily to the surface. There was also a refreshing and palpable momentum this year among literary organizations to find new ways to work together and coalesce more as a ‘field.’”

• The Split This Rock Poetry Festival is happening this weekend. If you’re in Washington, DC, check it out. They just announced a partnership with Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016 to create a new translation prize for conveying an Arabic poem into English.