Related Resources at the Library
Witter Bynner Fellows
2009 Witter Bynner Fellows
Poet Laureate Kay Ryan has chosen two gifted voices in poetry, Christina Davis and Mary Szybist, for the 2009 Witter Bynner Fellowships. [Read Press Release]
12th Annual Witter Bynner Award and Reading (February 26, 2009)
 Christina Davis photography by Jo Eldredge Morrisey Video interview with Christina Davis |
 Mary Szybist Video interview with Mary Szybist |
 (Requires RealPlayer software) |
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2008 Witter Bynner Fellows
Poet Laureate Charles Simic has chosen Matthew Thorburn and Monica Youn for the 2008 Witter Bynner Fellowships. Learn more about these emerging poets by exploring the resources below.
October 24, 2008
Matthew Thorburn and Monica Youn, winners of the 2008 Witter Bynner poetry fellowships
from the Library of Congress, will give a poetry reading in the Carol Huxley
Theater in the New York State Museum on Friday, October 24, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.
[More information]
2008
Witter Bynner Fellowship Awardees Poetry Reading
Matthew Thorburn
Matthew Thorburn works as a business-development writer for an international law firm in New York City. He is the author of Subject to Change (2004), and his poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review and other journals. From 2000 to 2004, Thorburn founded and co-edited the poetry journal Good Foot. His work has been recognized with the Mississippi Review Prize and the Belfast Poetry Festival’s inaugural Festivo Prize.
Thorburn is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the MFA program at The New School, a university in New York City. He is working on a second book of poems.
- Read Matthew Thorburn's blog.
Monica Youn
Monica Youn is an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and an adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University. She is the author of Barter (2003). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Norton Anthology: Language for a New Century.
Youn has earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton, a master’s of philosophy from Oxford and a law degree from Yale. She has received the Rhodes Scholarship and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University.
- The Poetry Foundation's Monica Youn page
2007 Witter Bynner Fellows
Poet Laureate Donald Hall has chosen Laurie Lamon and David Tucker for the 2007 Witter Bynner Fellowships. Learn more about these emerging poets by exploring the resources below.
Listen to an audio clip of Donald Hall introducing Laurie Lamon and David Tucker
Donald
Hall and Witter Bynner Fellowship Awardees Poetry Reading
(Download a free version of RealPlayer software)
Laurie Lamon
Laurie Lamon is the author of The Fork Without Hunger (2005). She was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2001 for the poem, "Pain Thinks of the Beautiful Table." Her work has appeared in the The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Ploughshares and other magazines and reviews. Lamon earned a doctorate in English literature in 1988 from the University of Utah, a master’s degree in 1982 from the University of Montana and a bachelor’s degree in 1978 from Whitworth College, where she is now an associate professor.
Photo by William Siems
David Tucker
David Tucker, a graduate of the University of Michigan, studied poetry with Robert Hayden, and his collection, Late for Work (2006), won a Bakeless Prize from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. His earlier collection, Days When Nothing Happens, won the 2003 Slapering Hol Press chapbook competition. Tucker has worked for 28 years at leading newspapers and is a member of the New Jersey Star-Ledger team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. A colleague at the newspaper said, "His nose for news is matched only by his ear for language and a capacious heart always seeking to plumb the human condition with both."
Video courtesy of NJN Television
Previous Witter Bynner Fellows
- 2007: Laurie Lamon and David Tucker (appointed by Donald Hall)
- 2006: Joseph Stroud and Connie Wanek (appointed by Ted Kooser)
- 2005: Claudia Emerson, Martin Walls (appointed by Ted Kooser)
- 2004: Dana Levin, Spencer Reece (appointed by Louise Glück)
- 2003: Major Jackson, Rebecca Wee (appointed by Billy Collins)
- 2002: George Bilgere, Katia Kopovich (appointed by Billy Collins)
- 2001: Tory Dent, Nick Flynn (appointed by Stanley Kunitz)
- 2000: Naomi Shihab Nye, Joshua Weiner (appointed by Robert Pinsky)
- 1999: David Gewanter, Campbell McGrath, Heather McHugh (appointed by Robert Pinsky)
- 1998: Carol Muske-Dukes, Carl Phillips (appointed by Robert Pinsky)