New York, NY (September 1, 2020)— The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that climate solutions leader Katharine K. Wilkinson and poet Camille T. Dungy will judge the 2021 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize, the Academy’s first poetry prize to address climate change, established in 2019 with generous support from Treehouse Investments, LLC. Three poets will be honored: first place will receive $1,000; second place, $750; and third place, $500. In addition, all three poems will be published in the popular Poem-a-Day series, which is distributed to 500,000+ readers. Poems may also be featured in the award-winning education series Teach This Poem, which serves 37,000+ educators each week.
“As we face the climate crisis, poems can help make clear the increasingly dire state of our environment. As Dominique Slavin, managing director of Treehouse Investments has said, ‘a good poem can remind us of everything we share, and everything we put at risk.’ We hope these poems might inspire readers to learn more about this urgent issue and how they can help,” said Jennifer Benka, executive director of the Academy of American Poets.
Submissions are now being accepted online, from September 1, 2020 through November 1, 2020 (11:59 p.m. EST). The winning poets will be announced on Thursday, April 22, 2021, which is Earth Day.
To review the official guidelines and submit, visit: https://poets.submittable.com/submit/173368/2021-treehouse-climate-action-poem-prize.
For more information about the prize, visit: www.poets.org/academy-american-poets/prizes/treehouse-climate-action-poem-prize.
About Camille T. Dungy
Camille T. Dungy is the author of Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017); Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize; Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010); and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006). She is also the author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (W. W. Norton, 2017), the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), and the co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea Books, 2009). Among Dungy’s honors are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is also a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award, in 2010 and 2011, and a Silver Medal Winner of the California Book Award. Dungy is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University and lives in Fort Collins.
About Katharine K. Wilkinson
Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson is an author, strategist, and teacher, working to heal the planet we call home. Her writings include The Drawdown Review (2020), the New York Times bestseller Drawdown (Penguin Books, 2017), and Between God & Green (Oxford University Press, 2012). With Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson she co-edited All We Can Save (One World, 2020), an anthology of writings by women climate leaders, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project. As the principle writer and editor-in-chief at Project Drawdown, Dr. Wilkinson leads the organization’s work to share climate solutions with audiences around the world. She co-hosts the forthcoming podcast A Matter of Degrees and speaks widely, including at National Geographic, Skoll World Forum, and the United Nations. Her TED Talk on climate and gender equality has more than 1.8 million views, and she collaborates with Mary Robinson and others to advance the feminist climate renaissance. In 2019 Time magazine named Dr. Wilkinson one of 15 “women who will save the world.”
About the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is the nation’s leading champion of poets and poetry with supporters in all fifty states. Founded in 1934, the organization produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; organizes National Poetry Month; publishes the popular Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides award-winning resources to K–12 educators, including the Teach This Poem series; administers the American Poets Prizes; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture. Through its prize program, the organization annually awards more funds to individual poets than any other organization, giving a total of $1,250,000 to more than 200 poets at various stages of their careers. This year, in response to the global health crisis, the Academy joined six other national organizations to launch Artist Relief, a multidisciplinary coalition of arts grantmakers and a consortium of foundations working to provide resources and funding to the country’s individual poets, writers, and artists who are impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
About Treehouse Investments
Treehouse Investments is a boutique distributed-infrastructure firm dedicated to reversing climate change. A family business, founded by a family from Puerto Rico, in 2007 Treehouse made a commitment to invest in a socially responsible way. Over the years Treehouse has become convinced that the only truly socially responsible investments are those which directly aim to reverse climate change.