CPR Book Award Judges
2010 - Patricia Smith
Patricia Smith, who has been called “a testament to the power of words to change lives,” is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection (Coffee House Press). Her poems have been published in The Paris Review and TriQuarterly, as well as many anthologies, including American Voices, The Spoken Word Revolution, and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. Smith also penned the critically acclaimed history Africans in America and the award-winning children’s book Janna and the Kings. A four-time individual champion on the National Poetry Slam, Smith has also been a featured poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and has performed her work around the world. She has written and performed two one-woman plays, one of which was produced by Derek Walcott’s Trinidad Theater Workshop. She is a Cave Canem faculty member and has served as the Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University.
2009 - David St. John
David St. John is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Face: A Novella in Verse, as well as a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us. He has been honored, over the course of his career, with many of the most significant prizes for poets, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, both the Rome Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the O. B. Hardison Prize (a career award for teaching and poetic achievement) from The Folger Shakespeare Library, and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. He currently teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he served as Director of The Ph. D. Program in Literature and Creative Writing.
2008 - Dorothy Barresi
Dorothy Barresi is the author of three books of poetry, All of the Above (Beacon Press,1991), winner of the Barnard College New Women Poets Prize, The Post-Rapture Diner (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press,1996), winner of an American Book Award, and most recently, Rouge Pulp (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2002). She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge.
2007 - Tony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland is the author of three volumes of poetry: Sweet Ruin, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets, and What Narcissism Means to Me, as well as a collection of essay's about poetry, Real Sofistakashun all by Graywolf Press. He is the winner of the 2005 O.B. Hardison Jr. Prize, and also received the 2005 Mark Twain Award, given by the Poetry Foundation in recognition of a poet’s contribution to humor in American poetry. He teaches in the graduate writing program of the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA program.
2006 - Dorianne Laux
Dorianne Laux is author of Awake, What We Carry, and Smoke (BOA Editions) and Facts About the Moon (W.W. Norton, 2005) as well as The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton, 1997). Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship and a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, an Editor's Choice III award, a Pushcart Prize, she was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the best book of poetry published in the United States the previous year. Her book Facts About the Moon won her the honor of the 2007 Oregon Book Award. Laux has been a fellow at BreadLoaf and contributing editor of Poetry Flash.
2005 - Virgil Suarez
Suarez is the author or co-author of over fifteen books of poetry and prose. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The New England Review, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Poetry New Zealand, Imago (Australia), The Toronto Review (Canada), The Barcelona Review (Spain), Ploughshares, and many others nationally and internationally. He is professor of Creative Writing at Florida State University.
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