Nikky Finney has won the $100,000 Wallace Stevens lifetime achievement award.
September 23, 2020, 4:09pm
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]
