New York, NY (January 9, 2025)—The Academy of American Poets, a leading supporter of poets and poetry for over ninety years, announces the election of Ada Limón and Eleanor Wilner to its fifteen-member Board of Chancellors.
Since 1946, the Chancellors have been a cornerstone of the Academy, advising the organization on matters of artistic programming, serving as judges for its largest prizes, and acting as ambassadors of poetry in the world at large. This group embodies the diversity and vibrancy of poetry being read and written across the nation.
The Board of Chancellors has elected some of the most celebrated voices in American poetry, including luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Marilyn Chin, Lucille Clifton, Robert Creeley, Rita Dove, Forrest Gander, Louise Glück, Marie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alicia Ostriker, Claudia Rankine, Adrienne Rich, Mark Strand, and Arthur Sze.
The election of Ada Limón and Eleanor Wilner as Chancellors celebrates their exceptional leadership, impact, and contributions to the art of poetry. Limón and Wilner, who will each serve a six-year term, were elected by members of the 2024 Board of Chancellors: Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Nikky Finney, Carolyn Forché, Kimiko Hahn, Ilya Kaminsky, Dorianne Laux, Ed Roberson, Diane Seuss, Patricia Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Kevin Young, as well as Joy Harjo and Natasha Trethewey, whose terms have since ended.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Ada Limón and Eleanor Wilner to the Academy, and delighted to announce that Chancellors Jericho Brown, Carolyn Forché, and Kimiko Hahn have been elected to serve as ex officio members of the Board of Directors in 2025. In this capacity, they will bring their voices and perspectives as poets to matters of institutional governance,” said Tess O’Dwyer, Board Chair.
Limón, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, is the author of numerous acclaimed collections, including The Carrying and Bright Dead Things. Her poetry has received accolades for its profound exploration of the human condition. Wilner, the author of collections such as Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems, 1975–2017 and Tourist in Hell, is renowned for work of historical resonance and visionary breadth, making her another essential voice in contemporary poetry.
“Poetry echoes loudly and unapologetically the transformative power that language has to connect, challenge, and inspire,” said Ricardo Maldonado, President and Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets. “Ada Limón and Eleanor Wilner’s distinctive voices and unrelenting dedication to craft and community have helped shape the literary landscape and expand poetry’s possibility, strengthening poetry’s role as a lens through which we can better understand ourselves and the world around us.”
About the New Chancellors
Ada Limón’s poetry collections include The Hurting Kind (Milkweed Editions, 2022); The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018); and Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology You are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2024). Limón has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center; a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts; and the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. In 2022, Limón was appointed United States poet laureate and, in 2023, was appointed to serve a second two-year term. In April of the same year, she served as Guest Editor of the Poem-a-Day series. Limón lives in Lexington, Kentucky, and Sonoma, California.
Eleanor Wilner has published nine collections of poetry, including Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems, 1975–2017 (Princeton University Press, 2019); Tourist in Hell (University of Chicago Press, 2010); and The Girl with Bees in Her Hair (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). Her other publications include a verse translation of Euripides’s Medea for the Penn Greek Drama Series (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) and a book on visionary imagination and social change, Gathering the Winds (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). Her work has appeared in more than fifty anthologies. Wilner has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2019 Frost Award from the Poetry Society of America for lifetime achievement; fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and three Pushcart Prizes. In 2022, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She taught for thirty years on the graduate faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. Wilner lives in Philadelphia.
About the Academy of American Poets
Founded in 1934, 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/.