FACULTY AWARD: Smith receives Academy of American Poets Fellowship

Tracy K. Smith, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, has been awarded the 2014 Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Established in 1936 and given in memory of James Ingram Merrill, the prize recognizes distinguished poetic achievement. Academy of American Poets Chancellor Toi Derricotte said: "The surfaces of a Tracy K. Smith poem are beautiful and serene, but underneath, there is always a sense of an unknown vastness. Her poems take the risk of inviting us to imagine, as the poet does, what it is to travel in another person's shoes." Smith will accept the $25,000 prize at a ceremony on Oct. 17 at The New School in New York City. Smith's most recent collection of poems is "Life on Mars" (2011), which won the Pulitzer Prize. W. S. Merwin, a 1948 alumnus, was awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award — a $1,000 prize recognizing a published translation of poetry from any language into English that demonstrates literary excellence — for "Selected Translations" (2013).