National Book Awards

Numbers & Golden Ages: A Closer Look at the National Book Award for Poetry

Numbers & Golden Ages: A Closer Look at the National Book Award for Poetry

Last week, the National Book Foundation announced nominees for its annual awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature. If we are, in the words of poet Kaveh Akbar, living in a “golden age of poetry,” what can a closer look at this year’s contenders tell us about it?

Deliberate Accidents of Discovery: The Trouble With Finding New Latina/o Writers

Deliberate Accidents of Discovery: The Trouble With Finding New Latina/o Writers

In an exercise of radical honesty I’ll share this with you: I almost always find great new Latina/o writing by accident. I think part of this is my pell-mell strategy of finding new books (at literary events, on coffee tables, etc.) though part of it can be attributed to my literary blind spots as well…