We are excited to announce that three NER poetry contributors have been chosen as recipients for this year’s Guggenheim Fellowship: Rick Barot, Jericho Brown, and Sally Keith. These poets are part of a group of 178 artists, writers, and scholars chosen from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants.

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 the winner of PEN’s Open Book Award, a recognition for a book-length work by an author of color. Since 2014, he has also served as the poetry editor for NER, after contributing as a reader for many years. Rick lives in Tacoma, Washington, and is the director of the MFA Program at the Rainier Writers Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University.

Jericho Brown has published poems in the Nation, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and Best American Poetry. His first book, Please (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament, was recently published by Copper Canyon Press. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Emory University. His work, including his poem Prayer of the Backhanded, appears in NER 28.1 and 35.3.

Sally Keith is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Fact of the Matter, Design, winner of the 2000 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and Dwelling Song, winner of the University of Georgia’s Contemporary Poetry Series competition. Her poetry appears in NER 33.2 and 24.4, as well as her essay “The Spirit of the Beehive” in our online series, Confluences.  She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Conference and teaches creative writing at George Mason University.

Congratulations to these NER poets and to all of the 2016 Guggenheim Fellows. More about the award and the current fellows can be found at the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website.