We’re happy to announce that Mai Der Vang is the recipient of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award for her manuscript, Afterland. In her citation, judge Carolyn Forché writes, “Afterland has haunted me. I keep returning to read these poems aloud, hearing in them a language at once atavistic, contemporary, and profoundly spiritual.” Afterland will be published by Graywolf Press in April 2017 and distributed to members of the Academy of American Poets. Vang will also receive $5,000 and a six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy.