CELEBRATING THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEES FOR POETRY

ANNELYSE GELMAN is the author of a previous poetry collection, Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone, the artist’s book POOL, and the EP About Repulsion. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Bomb, PEN Poetry Series, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She also directs Midst, an experimental platform for capturing and sharing the writing processes of contemporary poets. Her lates collection, Vexations, is longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award for Poetry.

CHARIF SHANAHAN is an American poet and translator.

EVIE SHOCKLEY is a poet and scholar, and the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University. A Lannan Literary Award-winner, she is the author of multiple books of poetry including a half-red sea; the new black, which received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry; and semiautomatic, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018. Her latest collection, suddenly we (Wesleyan University Press), has been longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award for Poetry.

JOSÉ OLIVAREZ is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. His lates book, Promises of Gold (Henry Holt and Co.), is longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award for Poetry.

MONICA YOUN is the author of From From: Poems (Graywolf Press), Blackacre: Poems, Ignatz, and Barter: Poems. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kingsley Tufts Award and the PEN Open Book Award. A former constitutional lawyer, Youn grew up in Houston as the daughter of Korean immigrants, and now splits her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Southern California, where she is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.

OLIVER DE LA PAZ is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in poetry. His work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, and Poetry, and in anthologies and periodicals such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation and The New York Times. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, de la Paz teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and lives in Holden, Massachusetts.

Former Utah Poet Laureate PAISLEY REKDAL is the author of four works of nonfiction, including Appropriate: A Provocation, and six collections of poetry, most recently Nightingale, which won the 2020 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships, grants, and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, Pushcart Press, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. A Seattle-area native, Rekdal received her master's degree in medieval studies from the University of Toronto, and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her work reflects her academic background in its frequent exploration and engagement with historical events that propel future narratives and identity politics that shape her life as an Asian American woman. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of community web projects Mapping Literary Utah and Mapping Salt Lake City. Her latest book, West: A Translation (Copper Canyon Press), has been longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award in Poetry.

RUTH DICKEY is the executive director of the National Book Foundation. She has spent more than 25 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art. For the last 10 years, she has also served as executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures, which brings the best writers and thinkers to Seattle stages and classrooms. She has led organizations in Washington, D.C.; New Orleans; Cincinnati; and Seattle to dramatically expand their community impact. Dickey holds an MFA in poetry from UNC-Greensboro, a BS in foreign service, and an MA in Latin American studies from Georgetown University. She was a 2017 fellow with the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program and served as a judge in fiction for the 2019 National Book Awards.