Finalist: Four-Legged Girl, by Diane Seuss (Graywolf Press)
A richly improvisational poetry collection that leads readers through a gallery of incisive and beguiling portraits and landscapes.
Winners
Prize Winner in Poetry in 2016:
Peter Balakian
Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
Poetry
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Poetry in 2016:
Elizabeth Willis
A book worthy of its title in which the poet calls readers to look deep within themselves and regard anew the struggle to live.
The Jury
The Jury
Nikky Finney(Chair)
John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters
Rafael Campo
Associate Professor of Medicine
Al Filreis
Kelly Professor of English
Winners in Poetry
Gregory Pardlo
Clear-voiced poems that bring readers the news from 21st Century America, rich with thought, ideas and histories public and private.
Vijay Seshadri
A compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.
Sharon Olds
A book of unflinching poems on the author's divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.
Tracy K. Smith
A collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain.
2016 Prize Winners
William Finnegan
A finely crafted memoir of a youthful obsession that has propelled the author through a distinguished writing career.
T.J. Stiles
A rich and surprising new telling of the journey of the iconic American soldier whose death turns out not to have been the main point of his life. (Moved by the Board from the Biography category.)
Peter Balakian
Poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that undergird a global age of danger and uncertainty.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
A layered immigrant tale told in the wry, confessional voice of a "man of two minds" -- and two countries, Vietnam and the United States.