The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce a new partnership with The Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Beginning in 2015, recipients of the organization’s James Laughlin Award will receive an all-expenses-paid weeklong residency at The Betsy’s Writer’s Room. The James Laughlin Award is the nation's only second-book award for poetry that is given annually and open to all poets who are citizens of the United States. This new partnership is part of the Academy of American Poets ongoing efforts to support poets at all stages of their careers.
The Betsy has a robust arts program, rooted in poetry and literature. The father of the hotel’s chairman, Jonathan Plutzik, is the late poet Hyam Plutzik (1911-1962), who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
The Betsy’s Writer’s Room offers emerging writers, artists, and thought leaders a space to create, develop their craft, and share their work through community programs. During his or her residency, the James Laughlin Award recipient will be invited to participate in a public reading or salon to share his or her work with the community.
In addition to this new residency, the Academy of American Poets will provide the James Laughlin Award recipient with $5,000; purchase copies of the winning book for distribution to a thousand of its members; feature the poet and his or her work in its magazine, American Poets, and on its website, Poets.org; and provide the winner a trip to New York City to attend the American Poets Prizes ceremony.
Submissions for the 2015 James Laughlin Award will be accepted online between January 1 and May 15, 2015, and the recipient will be announced in September 2015. The judges are Francisco X. Alarcón, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and D. Nurkse.
Offered since 1954, the James Laughlin Award was endowed in 1995 by a gift to the Academy from the Drue Heinz Trust. It is named for the poet and publisher James Laughlin (1914-1997), who founded New Directions Publishing in 1936. The James Laughlin Award is one of the American Poets Prizes, a collection of seven major prizes given by the Academy of American Poets.
Other upcoming deadlines for the American Poets Prizes
Submissions for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize are also accepted January 1 through May 15. This $25,000 award recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year. The judges for 2015 are Marie Howe, A. Van Jordan, and Donald Revell.
The submission periods for the $25,000 Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship, given to support a poet working on a new translation of modern Italian poetry, and the $1,000 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award end February 15. The judges for the 2015 Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship are Adria Bernardi, Luigi Fontanella, and Giuseppe Leporace, and the judge for the 2015 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award is Bill Johnston.
About The Betsy Hotel
Situated at the edge of the Atlantic, The Betsy is located in the heart of South Beach and is the only Forbes Four Star and AAA Four Diamond boutique hotel in Miami Beach. The Betsy offers wide-ranging programs that embrace the richness of global arts and culture, and it is host hotel for a myriad of regional arts-centric festivals and programs. Since it’s opening in 2012, The Betsy Hotel’s Writer’s Room has hosted over 200 authors, artists, and thought leaders, including notable poets Billy Collins, Nikky Finney, and Robert Haas. Each room at the hotel has a small library of poetry and other books, and a poetry bookmark is placed on each guest’s pillow every night.
About the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is the largest member-supported nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. The organization produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly-funded website for poets and poetry; National Poetry Month; American Poets magazine; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. In addition, since its founding in 1934, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization through its American Poets Prizes. The prizes include the $100,000 Wallace Stevens award for lifetime achievement; the $25,000 Academy of American Poets Fellowship; the Walt Whitman Award, the most valuable first-book publication prize for poetry; and others.