San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye receives $100,000 lifetime achievement award
San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye has added one more award to her long list of prestigious honors: The Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.
The lifetime achievement award, which carries a $100,000 stipend, is given annually to recognize distinguished achievement in poetry.
Previous recipients include Rita Dove, Louise Glück, W. S. Merwin and Adrienne Rich.
The announcement was made today at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In addition, the academy gave Evie Shockley its fellowship, which comes with a $25,000 stipend.
In a statement, Ricardo Maldonado, president and executive director of the organization, described the writers as "two major voices who have made a space for the extraordinary possibility of poetry as a register of observation and reflection, compassion and togetherness, justice and grace."
Nye has produced dozens of books in her lengthy career, including poetry collections, novels and children's books. She also has edited collections and written short stories.
Her latest books are "Grace Notes," a collection of poems she wrote following the death of her mother; and "I Know About a Thousand Things: The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas," which she edited with her friend Marion Winik.
"In a stunning spectrum of works published in a period beginning nearly 50 years ago, Naomi Shihab Nye has borne witness to the complexities of cultural difference that connect us as human beings, evidencing a firm commitment to the poet as bearer of light and hope," Academy Chancellor Afaa Michael Weaver said in a statement. "In celebrating her Palestinian heritage with a gentle but unflinching commitment, her body of work is a rare and precious living entity in our time, when the tragic conflict between Gaza and Israel threatens to deepen wounds and resentments everywhere. ...
"What her work would have us know, namely that only peace brings lasting peace, is what her grandmother and elders taught her as a child, the ubiquitous power of the beauty of simple things, the necessities of life that we must share if we are to endure."
The Wallace Stevens Award is not the only honor Nye has received this fall. Earlier this month, the Texas Book Festival announced that it was giving her its Texas Writer Award as part of this year's festivities. That award is given to writers who have had a deep impact on Texas literature, and comes with a pair of custom-made cowboy boots.
Other awards that she has racked up in her long career include lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Critics Circle, Texas Institute of Letters and the Arab American Museum. She served as the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate from 2019 to '22 and was a finalist for the National Book Award for young people's literature for her 2002 book "19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East."
This story was originally published October 18, 2024, 6:49 PM.
