Two Past Award Series Winners Take Home Major Prizes

April 18, 2016

Beth BachmannTwo previous winners of the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, Iliana Rocha and Beth Bachmann, received news this month of further honors.

Iliana Rocha’s 2014 Donald Hall Prize–winning book Karankawa was selected as the winner in the Poetry category of the Society of Midland Authors Annual Literary Award competition for books published in 2015. The Society has been honoring the best books by Midwest authors since 1957. This honor is commemorated by an engraved plaque and an award of $500. The awards will be presented at the Society’s annual banquet on Tuesday, May 10, in Chicago’s Cliff Dwellers Club.

Joy Harjo, who selected Rocha’s book for the Award Series, said, “These are the poems of a new fire. Raw fire makes a unique trail as it burns. They are fueled by passionate, lyrical surrealism.”

 

Iliana RochaBeth Bachmann, whose Temper won the 2008 Donald Hall Prize, received a Guggenheim Fellowship this year following her second book, Do Not Rise (2015). Bachmann was one of 175 people from artistic and scientific fields to be awarded a fellowship this year, out of 3,000 applicants. The fellowship carries an honorarium of $50,000.

Former United States Poet Laureate Robert Hass has written of her work, “Beth Bachmann’s Temper was the last time [in forty years] I remember reading a first book by a poet so prodigally and—the word that came to mind was—severely gifted. The new poems in Do Not Rise are a quantum leap forward with all the metaphorical leaps, adumbrations, dizzyings, deft, brief knottings that make the poems in Temper so dazzling. What they share with Temper is the unnerving poise and curiosity about the terrible things that we know. A remarkable young talent, and a scary one.”

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