PEN American recently announced the shortlists for the 2016 PEN Literary Awards. Congratulations to all the writers recognized, and in particular to NER Poetry Editor Rick Barot, and NER contributors Reginald Dwayne Betts and Philip Metres.

Rick Barot has published three books of poetry: The Darker Fall (2002) received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, and Want (2008) won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize. His most recent book, Chord (2015), is on the shortlist for PEN’s Open Book Award, a recognition for a book-length work by an author of color. He has worked as the Poetry Editor at NER since fall 2014.

 

Reginald Dwayne Betts is author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009), and Shahid Reads His Own Palm (2010), which won the 2010 Beatrice Hawley Award. His newest collection, Bastards of the Reagan Era, is on the shortlist for PEN’s Open Book Award. Betts’s poetry has appeared in NER 31.4, 34.1, and 35.3.

 

Philip Metres is on the shortlist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for his co-translated book I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovksy. He is the author of several books of original poetry as well as poetry in translation, including Sand Opera (2015), To See the Earth (2008), and Behind the Lines (2002). His work appeared in NER 34.3-4, 25.4, 23.4, and 22.3 and is forthcoming in 2016.