Winner of the Sister Mariella Gable Book Award is finalist for National Book Award
October 21, 2014
This year's winner of the Sister Mariella Gable Award, "Citizen: An American Lyric" by Claudia Rankine, has been named a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award in poetry.
The Sister Mariella Gable Award is given each year by the College of Saint Benedict to an important work of literature published by Graywolf Press.
It is one of two books from the Minneapolis publisher to be named a finalist in the poetry division. The other nominated book, "Second Childhood," is by Fanny Howe, who was a writer in residence at CSB and Studium in 2008. The National Book Awards will be presented Nov. 19 in New York City.
"Citizen" is the 14th book to be given the Sister Mariella Gable Book Award. The late Sister Mariella Gable was a Dante scholar, poet, editor, writer and champion of new fiction. She was an outstanding English professor who taught at CSB from 1928-73.
"Citizen: An American Lyric" is Rankine's first new book in nearly a decade and fifth book overall, and addresses issues of race and class in this country. In 2014, Rankine was awarded Poets & Writers magazine Jackson Poetry Prize, presented to an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition. She is currently the Henry G. Lee Professor of Poetry at Pomona College.
"Citizen" is a follow-up to "Don't Let Me Be Lonely," the poet's 2004 inquiry into authenticity in a post-9/11 world. The projects "work like a pair of bookends, the former turning inward and the latter outward, as if representing two sides of a lacerating blade," according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper.
Rankine will be in residence at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University from Feb. 3-6 as this year's Sister Mariella Gable Visiting Writer. She will conduct a public reading on Feb. 5 from the nominated book.
Graywolf Press, described by Ploughshares magazine as "arguably the best small press in the country," and the Literary Arts Institute have formed an innovative collaboration to explore new ways of promoting the literary arts on campus, to audiences in the surrounding area and in the Twin Cities.