New York, NY (September 14, 2022)— The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that climate scientist Dr. Peter Kalmus and poet Matthew Olzmann will judge the 2023 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize, the Academy’s first poetry prize to address climate change, established in 2019 with generous support from Treehouse Investments, LLC. Three poets will be honored: 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 is distributed to 500,000+ readers. Poems may also be featured in the award-winning education series Teach This Poem, which serves 39,000+ educators each week.
Submissions will be accepted online from September 15, 2022 through November 15, 2022 (11:59 p.m. EST). The winning poets will be announced on Thursday, April 22, 2023, which is Earth Day.
For more information about the prize, visit: www.poets.org/academy-american-poets/prizes/treehouse-climate-action-poem-prize
About Peter Kalmus
Dr. Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is the recipient of NASA’s Early Career Achievement Medal. Peter has a B.Sc. in physics from Harvard and a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia, and his research interests include severe weather, wildfire prediction, coral reef decline, and extreme humid heat. He is also a climate activist, the founder of the Climate Ad Project, and the author of numerous articles and the book Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution. He lives in North Carolina.
About Matthew Olzmann
Matthew Olzmann was born in Detroit. He received a BA from the University of Michigan–Dearborn and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He is the author of Constellation Route (Alice James Books, 2022); Contradictions in the Design (Alice James Books, 2016); and Mezzanines (Alice James Books, 2013), winner of the 2011 Kundiman Poetry Prize. Olzmann has received fellowships from the Kresge Arts Foundation and Kundiman, among others. Olzmann teaches at Dartmouth College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Vermont.
About the Academy of American Poets
Founded in 1934, the Academy of American Poets is the nation’s leading champion of poets and poetry with supporters in all fifty states and beyond. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to more 200+ poets at various stages of their careers through its prize and fellowship programs. The organization 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 popular Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to K–12 educators, including the award-winning weekly Teach This Poem series; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition working to promote the value poets bring to our culture.
About Treehouse Investments
Treehouse Investments, LLC is a minority-owned infrastructure investment firm dedicated to addressing climate change. We focus on decentralized infrastructure because we believe that infrastructure provides the foundation on which all other human endeavors are built, and decentralized solutions incorporate the resilience our world increasingly needs.