Kathy Fagan Grandinetti, Director of Ohio State's Creative Writing Program, is a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, one of the world’s most prestigious poetry awards.

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) has announced the selection of the finalists for the award, in recognition of a book by a mid-career poet. Five finalists have been chosen by a committee led by Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine.

The Kingsley Tufts award was started at CGU in 1993 by Kate Tufts to honor her late husband, Kingsley, who held various executive positions in L.A.-area shipyards and wrote and published poetry. This lucrative award—a total of $100,000, making it the world’s largest monetary prize for a single collection of poetry—aims to both honor the poet and provide the resources that allow artists to continue working towards the pinnacle of their craft. 

“These awards celebrate a poetry of engagement with a modern world that is by turns familiar and surpassing strange; threatening and captivating; heartbreaking and breathtakingly lovely,” said Professor Lori Anne Ferrell, who directs the Tufts Poetry Awards at CGU. “Each finalist this year pays singular tribute to the ideals Kate wanted to honor when she first established an award in memory of her husband.”

Fagan Grandinetti adds this to her amounting list of accolades, including  being chosen as the Ohio Poetry Association’s "Ohio Poet of the Year" and receiving the Raymond J. Hanley award this past year.

Congratulations, Kathy!

By Madalynn Conkle