New York, NY (November 12, 2026)—The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that Shane McCrae has received the 2026 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for his book-length poem New and Collected Hell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025).
The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous calendar year. The award includes a $25,000 cash prize and a ten-day residency at Glen Hollow in Naples, New York. The Academy will also distribute copies of the winning book to its members.
“Shane McCrae’s book-length poem, New and Collected Hell, is a showcase of vision, lyricism, and depth,” said Robert Casper, president and executive director of the Academy of American Poets. “We are thrilled to honor him with the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, as we have honored so many visionary American poets for over half a century—among them John Ashbery, Wanda Coleman, Adrienne Rich, C. D. Wright, Kevin Young, and most recently Fady Joudah.”
In their citation, judges Tracie Morris, Luis J. Rodríguez, and Eleni Sikelianos wrote:
“McCrae’s book is not only cohesive linearly, interpoetically, and as a complete project, but it also shows an efficient and innovative approach to craft that is substantial and exquisitely masterful. We felt a sense of satisfaction in the drive, silence, space, and tensions within sections. The mellifluous energy between all aspects of this book demonstrates a poet at the height of his powers up to now. McCrae clearly has substantive contributions to make, and we look forward to reading them.”
Shane McCrae is the author of nearly a dozen books of poetry, including The Many Hundreds of the Scent (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023); Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), a finalist for the Forward Prize; Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Rilke Prize; and In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. McCrae has also received the Lannan Literary Award, the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, the Michael Marks Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.
About the Judges
Tracie Morris is a poet and visual artist. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including handholding: 5 kinds (Kore Press, 2016) and Rhyme Scheme (Zasterle Press, 2012). With Charles Bernstein, she served as a guest coeditor of BAX 2016: Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press, 2016). Her installations and performances have been presented at various venues, including the Whitney Biennial, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Centre Pompidou. Morris is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Cave Canem alumna, and a designated Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is a professor of poetry at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Luis J. Rodríguez is the author of several books of poetry, including My Nature Is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989–2004 (Curbstone Books, 2005), winner of the Paterson Poetry Book Prize; Trochemoche (Curbstone Books, 1998); and The Concrete River (Curbstone Books, 1991), winner of a PEN West/Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. His acclaimed autobiographical works include Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (Curbstone Books, 1993), winner of the Carl Sandburg Award, and It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone, 2011), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Rodríguez is also a journalist, critic, and the founder of Tía Chucha Press, which publishes emerging, socially conscious poets. He was appointed poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2014 and comanages the Tía Chucha Cultural Center and Bookstore in California’s San Fernando Valley.
Eleni Sikelianos is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Your Kingdom (Coffee House Press, 2023) and The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead (Coffee House Press, 2013), as well as a trilogy of hybrid memoirs, most recently Memory Rehearsal (City Lights, 2026). Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and she has translated books from the French by Mohamed Leftah, Sabine Macher, and Jacques Roubaud. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Writing, and the New York Council for the Arts Translation Award. Sikelianos has taught poetry in public schools, homeless shelters, and prisons and currently teaches poetry in the literary arts department at Brown University.
About the Academy of American Poets
Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is the largest poetry membership organization in the United States. Each year, the Academy awards more than $1.3 million to 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; organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts public poetry programs 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, visit https://poets.org/.
A photo of McCrae is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11JyZSP_Mew5qjPt9hjuNt8N5i_0-iMrG/view?usp=sharing
For more information and press requests:
Peggy Ryan
Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications, Academy of American Poets
[email protected]
(646) 470-2405