Hongo to Receive Aiken Taylor Award
Every year since 1987, the Sewanee Review has honored a distinguished poet in the maturity of their career with the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry. This year we are recognizing Garrett Hongo. Hongo is the author of three collections of poetry, including “Yellow Light, The River of Heaven,” which received the Lamont Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Coral Road: Poems.” Hongo is also the author of “Volcano: a Memoir of Hawai‘i,” “The Mirror Diary,” and his most recent book is “The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo.”
The celebration will take place on Oct. 11 and Oct. 12. Acting Vice-Chancellor Berner and Sewanee Review editor Adam Ross will present Hongo with the award at 5 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 12, in Convocation Hall, after which Hongo will read from his body of work.
On Tuesday, Oct. 11, at 4:30 p.m., Christopher Spaide will lecture on Hongo’s poetry in Guerry Auditorium. Spaide, a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, has written widely on music, comics, and poetry, and his work appears in the Boston Globe, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Contemporary Literature, Ploughshares, Poetry, and the Sewanee Review. He was recently named a 2022-2023 Fellow at the James Merrill House.