New York, NY (August 29, 2024)—The Academy of American Poets announced today that J. Drew Lanham, poet and MacArthur Fellow, and Dr. T. Jane Zelikova, scientist and executive director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center, will judge the 2025 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize.
The Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize, which was established in 2019 with generous support from Treehouse Investments, LLC, honors exceptional poems that help readers recognize the gravity of the vulnerable state of our environment. Three poets will be recognized: 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 reaches 1,000,000+ readers and listeners daily. Poems may also be featured in the award-winning education series Teach This Poem, which serves 40,000+ educators each week.
Submissions will be accepted online from September 1, 2024, through November 1, 2024 (11:59 p.m. EST). The winning poets will be announced on April 22, 2025, which is Earth Day.
For more information about the prize, and to apply, visit: www.poets.org/academy-american-poets/prizes/treehouse-climate-action-poem-prize
About J. Drew Lanham
J. Drew Lanham is an academic and poet from Edgefield, South Carolina. He is the author of Sparrow Envy: Poems (Hub City Press, 2019); The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Editions, 2017); and Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts (Hub City Press, 2021). He was awarded the Dan W. Lufkin Prize for Environmental Leadership from the National Audubon Society, the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education, the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation from Center for Biological Diversity, and a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” Most recently, he was awarded the Rowland Alston Award for Excellence from Clemson University, and the Tommy Wyche Land Conservation Champion Award from Upstate Forever, a South Carolina land conservancy. Lanham holds an endowed chair at Clemson University. He is the poet laureate of Edgefield County, South Carolina. In 2022, Lanham received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
About Dr. T. Jane Zelikova
Dr. T. Jane Zelikova received her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado and has worked across academia, government, and nonprofit organizations to address climate change, from fundamental science to application and the development of climate solutions. She is currently the executive director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center at Colorado State University and the co-founder of 500 Women Scientists, a global nonprofit organization working to make science open, inclusive, and accessible. She cofounded Hey Girl Productions, a company that brings a scientific eye to creative media projects. Hey Girl coproduced the award-winning short film The End of Snow. Dr. Zelikova also contributed to All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (One World, 2021), an anthology of essays by women writers about climate change.
About the Academy of American Poets
Celebrating its ninetieth anniversary in 2024, the Academy of American Poets is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry across the United States. The organization annually awards $1.3+ million to more than two hundred poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program. It also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; established and organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture. To learn more about the Academy of American Poets, including its staff, its Board of Directors, and its Board of Chancellors, visit https://poets.org.
About Treehouse Investments
Treehouse Investments, LLC, is a minority-owned infrastructure investment firm dedicated to addressing climate change. Treehouse focuses on decentralized infrastructure because it believes that infrastructure provides the foundation on which all other human endeavors are built, and decentralized solutions incorporate the resilience our world increasingly needs.