An $85,000 literary prize has been awarded to Sandra Lim, a poet who has published three collections. Lim is this year’s winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize, given to an American poet of “exceptional talent.” The award was announced Wednesday by Poets & Writers. The nonprofit organization publishes Poets & Writers Magazine and helps support hundreds of writers each year. Lim’s books include “The Curious Thing,” “The Wilderness” and “Loveliest Grotesque,” and her work has appeared in numerous publications. Joy Harjo, Henri Cole, Sonia Sanchez and Claudia Rankine are among the previous winners of the Jackson prize.
It’s not every day that a poet releases his first book at 78, but that is what Richard Sime, a resident of the venerable Villa Charlotte Brontë in Spuyten Duyvil, will have done when his collection of poems, “The Next Breath,” is published by Finishing Line Press in June.
Ensemble Pi has announced Banned Books, presented by the Music & Recorded Sound Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Banned Books is an evening-length performance of six premieres commissioned by Ensemble Pi in response to recent U.S. bills, which ban books or curtail the discussion of critical race theory, LGBTQ+ issues, antisemitism and other disputed topics in public schools and libraries.