We are pleased to announce that Harryette Mullen has selected Threa Almontaser as the recipient of the 2020 Walt Whitman Award, the nation’s most valuable first-book prize for a poet, for her manuscript, The Wild Fox of Yemen, which will be published by Graywolf Press in April 2021.
Established in 1975, the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award is designed to encourage the work of emerging poets. Previous recipients include poets Nicole Cooley, Suji Kwock Kim, Eric Pankey, Matt Rasmussen, Mai Der Vang, Jenny Xie, and Academy Chancellor Emeritus Alberto Ríos.
Threa Almontaser is a Yemeni American writer, translator, and multimedia artist from New York City. She holds an MFA from North Carolina State University and teaches English to immigrants and refugees in Raleigh, North Carolina.