Aiken Taylor Award Events March 1 & 2
Thursday, February 23, 2017
The Sewanee Review’s annual Aiken Taylor celebration will take place on March 1 and 2 on the campus of the University of the South. Mary Ruefle is the winner of the 2017 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. Ruefle has authored 12 books of poetry, including “My Private Property” (2016) and “Trances from the Blast” (2013), as well as two collections of prose, and other writings.
On Wednesday, March 1, at 4:30 p.m., poet Michael Dickman will give a lecture in Convocation Hall on Ruefle’s poetry. Dickman’s most recent collection, “Green Migraine,” was published in 2016. At 4:30 p.m., Thursday, March 2, also in Convocation Hall, University of the South Vice-Chancellor John McCardell and Sewanee Review Editor Adam Ross will present Ruefle with the award, after which she will give a reading of her work. Receptions will follow both events.
Michael Klein has said in the Los Angeles Review of Books: “[Ruefle’s work] is best enjoyed simply as a sampling of moods and thoughts from the same intelligent, delving mind, the kind of pieces one reads for questions, not for answers.” Ruefle has received numerous literary honors, including the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Whiting Award.