Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards

2017 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards Press Release

Vievee Francis

Vievee Francis is the author of Forest Primeval (Northwestern University Press, 2016), Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), which won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University, 2006). Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, textbooks, and anthologies, including Best American Poetry (2010 & 2014) and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. In 2009 she received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and most recently the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She serves as an Associate Editor of Callaloo and an Associate Professor of English (creative writing) at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.

Phillip B. Williams

Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois native. He is the author of the book of poems Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books, 2016), which is a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He received a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Phillip received his MFA in Writing from the Washington University in St. Louis. He is the Co-editor in Chief of the online journal Vinyl, was the Emory University Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry for 2015-2016, and is currently visiting professor in English at Bennington College.

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