This just in: Terrance Hayes, guest editor of the Best American Poetry 2014, has been named a MacArthur fellow.
Terrance Hayes, a nationally renowned poet and a University of Pittsburgh writing professor, was in a Highland Park coffee shop a little more than a week ago when he got the call of a lifetime.
Stunned, he turned to his wife, Yona Harvey, likewise a poet and Pitt professor, and shared the incredible news — he had been named one of 21 recipients of the prestigious MacArthur fellowships awarded to individuals “who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future.”
In announcing the fellowships today, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation said Mr. Hayes, 42, “is a poet who reflects on race, gender, and family in works marked by formal dexterity and a reverence for history and the artistry of crafting verse. … In creating works that seamlessly and meaningfully encompass both the historical and the personal, Hayes is extending the possibilities of language and pushing the art of poetry toward places altogether new.”
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