Nikky Finney has won the $100,000 Wallace Stevens lifetime achievement award.
There’s big news in poetry (drumroll, please): Today, the American Academy of Poets announced that Nikky Finney has won the Wallace Stevens Award, which comes with a whopping $100,000 purse. The prize, established in 1994, is conferred annually to honor outstanding artistic achievement in the art of poetry over a poet’s career.
Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina in 1957 to a family of politicians and activists. She began writing poetry as a young girl, during the time of the civil rights movement. A 2011 National Book Award winner, Finney is the author of the poetry collections Head Off & Split, The World Is Round, Rice, and Heartwood; her latest is Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts.
[h/t ABC News]
Rasheeda Saka
Rasheeda Saka was Literary Hub's 2020 fall-winter editorial fellow. In 2018, she was named one of Epiphany Magazine's Breakout 8 writers for her short story "The Killers' Den." Her work has appeared in Alta Online, Literary Hub, and TriQuarterly.
