Guest post by Sam Taggart.
The MFA program at UVA has had quite the couple of weeks. As announced last week, the poetry writing professor, Pulitzer Prize winner, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove was elected to the prestigious Academy of Arts and Letters.
Adding to the department’s winning streak, fiction writing professor and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow winner Deborah Eisenberg has been awarded the PEN/Faulkner award, which is the highest peer-reviewed writing honor in the U.S.
Rounding out the success stories is the announcement that former UVA MFA student Katherine Larson has been selected as winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets for 2011. The judge, famed poet Louise Glück, chose Larson’s manuscript, Radial Symmetry to be published in April 2011. The award, which has been earned by such names as Adrienne Rich and Robert Hass, helps to bring attention to the younger, less known American poets.
Can Deborah Eisenberg’s winning streak be stopped?
