Work of ODU Poets Tim Seibles and Luisa Igloria Earn National Awards

February 12, 2014

Luisa Igloria

The literary musings of Old Dominion University English professors Tim Seibles and Luisa Igloria have once again been recognized with national awards.

Seibles was recently named a recipient of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for his recent book, "Fast Animal." Igloria's manuscript "Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser" was selected for the 2014 May Swenson Poetry Prize. In addition, Igloria's poem "The Loss and Recovery of Wings" was chosen for inclusion in the 2013 Best of the Net Anthology by Sundress Publications.

According to the PEN Oakland website, the Josephine Miles awards, which are given annually, were "created to honor writers of exceptional works often not acknowledged by the mainstream literary community."

The May Swenson Poetry Prize is awarded annually by Utah State University Press, which will publish Igloria's book in summer 2014. It honors Swenson, a poet considered "one of America's most provocative and vital writers," according to the Utah State website.

Seibles' list of accomplishments includes being named a finalist for a National Book Award, in 2012, for "Fast Animal."

Igloria's honors include a 1998 Carlos Palanca Award for Literature - the Philippine equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

In addition to the latest honors received by Seibles and Igloria, several writers affiliated with the ODU Master of Fine Arts creative writing program have been lauded recently or had a literary work selected for publication. Those recognitions include:

• Janet Peery, ODU professor of creative writing, was awarded a 2014 Story Quarterly Fiction Prize, from Rutgers University, for her story "No Boy at All."
• Christian Anton Gerard, an ODU M.F.A. graduate (poetry) and current doctoral candidate in English at the University of Tennessee, will have his first book, "Wilmot Here, Collect for Stella," published soon by CW Books.
• Natalie Diaz, an ODU M.F.A. graduate and former Lady Monarchs basketball standout, won a 2014 Pushcart Prize for her poem "Cranes, Mafiosos and a Polaroid Camera" and a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for her book "When My Brother Was an Aztec."

More information about the ODU M.F.A. in creative writing program can be found on the College of Arts and Letters website.