India-born poet wins 2014 Pulitzer Prize
BY Agencies16 April 2014 11:35 PM GMT
Agencies16 April 2014 11:35 PM GMT
India-born poet Vijay Seshadri has won the prestigious 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category for his collection of poems ‘3 Sections.’
The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music were announced Monday by Columbia University here.
Seshadri’s ‘3 Sections’ is a ‘compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave,
compassionate and remorseless,’ the announcement said. The prize for the poetry category was given for a
‘distinguished volume of original verse’ by an American author.
Seshadri would receive USD 10,000 reward. According to Seshadri’s biography on the Pulitzer website, he currently teaches poetry and nonfiction writing at liberal arts college Sarah Lawrence in New York. Born in south Indian city Bangalore in 1954, Seshadri came to America at the age of five and grew up in Columbus, Ohio.
His collections of poems include James Laughlin Award winner The Long Meadow and Wild Kingdom (1996). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in prestigious publications including the American Scholar, the Nation, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Yale Review, the Times Book Review, the Philadelphia Enquirer and in many anthologies, including Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets and The Best American Poetry 1997 and 2003.
Seshadri has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been awarded the Paris Review’s Bernard F Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement.
Seshadri is the fifth person of Indian origin to bag the prestigious award, the first being Gobind Behari Lal in 1937. Lal, a science editor, was awarded the Pulitzer in the Reporting category
for his coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University when he was working for Universal Service.
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