Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Goes to Ross Gay

Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press), is the winner of Claremont Graduate University’s (CGU) $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The annual award is given to a mid-career poet and is one of the most generous poetry prizes in the world.

CGU’s $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award went to Danez Smith for the book [insert] boy (YesYes Books). The Kate Tufts Discovery Award is given annually for a first book by a poet of promise.

A ceremony for this year's winners will be held on April 7, 2016 at 5 pm at Rose Hills Theater, Smith Campus Center (170 E. 6th Street, Claremont). 

Finalists for the 2016 Kate Tufts Discovery Award included Meg Day for Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street); Bethany Schultz Hurst for Miss Lost Nation (Anhinga Press); Michael Morse for Void and Compensation (Canarium); and Henry Walters for Field Guide A Tempo (Hobblebush Books).

Final judges were Stephen Burt, literary critic and English professor at Harvard University; Elena Karina Byrne, poet and poetry curator/moderator for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books; Brian Kim Stefans, poet and professor of English at University of California, Los Angeles; Don Share, poet and editor of POETRY Magazine; and Chase Twichell, chair of the judging committee and past winner of the Kingsley Tufts award.