Award Winning Wesleyan Books

Alice Notley's Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 is the recipient of the 2007 Lenore Marshall Prize, awarded by the Academy of American Poets.

A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism is the Postwar Years, 1945-1960, is the 2007 recipient of the de la Torre Bueno Prize, awarded by the Society for Dance History Scholars to the Best Book in the Field.

In Balanchine's Company: A Dancer's Memoir, by Barbara Milberg Fisher was selected as an "Outstanding" title for 2007 in this year's "University Press Books Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries," which is published for the American Association of School Libraries (AASL) and the Public Library Association (PLA).

Gilgamesh: A Verse Play, by Yusef Komunyakaa and Chad Gracia was selected as an "Outstanding" title for 2007 in this year's "University Press Books Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries," which is published for the American Association of School Libraries (AASL) and the Public Library Association (PLA).

Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, edited by Justine Larbalestier, received the 2007 William Atheling, Jr. Award from the Australian National Science Fiction Convention.

Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Gilgamesh and Pleasure Dome, is a recipient of the The American Poetry Review's Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize for 2006.

Grave of Light, by Alice Notley, is a finalist for the 2007 Quill Awards. The winners will be announced on September 10th.

Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown & Parliament, by Anne Danielsen, received a Certificate of Merit in the category of Best Research in Recorded Blues, Rhythm & Blues, or Soul Music from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections.

About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Fiver Interviews, by Samuel Delany, is a finalist for a 2007 Hugo Award in the category of "Best Related Book."

Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, edited by Justine Larbalestier, is being honored with the Popular Cultural Association's Susan Koppelman Award for edited feminist books in American or Popular Cultural studies. The award is given for best anthology, multi-authored, or edited book in feminist studies in popular culture.

Jazz Consciousness: Music, Race, and Humanity (Paul Austerlitz) received an honorable mention from the IASPM's 2006 Woody Guthrie Award Committee.

Wesleyan authors John Luther Adams, Ralph Lemon, and Heather McHugh were among the 50 artists chosen as USA Fellows by United States Artists.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies (AIATSIS) has awarded Allan Marett with the 2006 Stanner Award for his book Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia.

The MLA has awarded Wilson Baldridge the 2006 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Translation of Literary Work. The award is for his translation of Recumbents (Gisants) by Michel Deguy.

Peter Doyle was the 2006 recipient of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections' Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research for his book Echo and Reverb.

Paul Austerlitz was the 2006 recipient of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Alan Merriam Prize for his book Jazz Consciousness.

Paul Greene and Tom Porcello were the 2006 recipients of the Society for Ethnomusicology's Klaus Wachsmann Award for their book Wired for Sound.

Born to Slow Horses by Kamau Brathwaite has been awarded the 2006 Griffin International Poetry Prize.

Brenda Hillman's Pieces of Air in the Epic has received the 2006 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Wilson Baldridge has received the 2006 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for his translation of Michel Deguy's Recumbents.

Wesleyan poet Jean Valentine (Door in the Mountain; Cradle of the Real World) is the recipient of the 2006 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award given by the American Academy of Arts & Letters. This award of $10,000 is given to "a progressive, original, and experimental writer."

Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording was the recipient of a 2005 Deems Taylor Award, given by the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP).

Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, edited by Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau, received the Society for Ethnomusicology's Robert M. Stevenson Prize in 2005.

Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop, by Joseph G. Schloss, has won the International Association for the Study of Popular Music's 2005 Book Award. This international award was officially announced at the General Meeting of IASPM, held in Rome, on July 29, 2005.

Jean Valentine, author of Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003, was awarded the sixth annual Jean Kennedy Smith NYU Creative Writing Award of Distinction.

Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003, by Jean Valentine, has won the prestigious 2004 National Book Award in Poetry. The collection contains more than 70 new poems and selections from eight previous books by the author.

Transsexualism: Illusion & Reality, by Colette Chiland, translated by Philip Slotkin, is among seven nominated for the 2004 Gradiva Award in the Historical, Cultural & Literary Analysis category by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). The Gradiva is awarded for the best published, produced or publicly exhibited work that advances psychoanalysis. Winners will be announced in October 2004 at the NAAP conference.

Culture on Ice: Figure Skating and Cultural Meaning, by Ellyn Kestnbaum, was among five books shortlisted for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Book Award, 2003. From twenty-nine entries, one winner and two honorable books were selected. The award is given for outstanding research and writing, to a distinguished book on any aspect sport history.

Wesleyan poet Yusef Komunyakaa (Pleasure Dome) has been selected as the winner of the Poetry Society of America (PSA) 94th Annual 2004 Shelley Memorial Award. This honor, given by nomination only, carries a four-figure stipend. It is awarded to a living American poet, selected with reference to his or her genius and need.

Poet Lee Ann Brown (The Sleep That Changed Everything) has been selected from 319 applicants to receive one of twelve Howard Foundation Fellowships for 2004-2005. The award, for $20,000, is primarily to support people in the middle stages of their careers whose work to date is evidence of their promise and achievement. It will allow her to take the Spring 2005 semester off to work intensively on a new book.

Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain, by Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilan, has been selected one of the “Best of the Best from the University Presses: Book You Should Know About,” which highlights 29 titles reviewed for the ALA 2004 University Press Books Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 14th Edition.

Eyeshot, by Heather McHugh, was named one of two finalists for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The book is also a finalist in the Poetry category for the 2003 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards.

The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics, by Barrett Watten, will receive the 2004 René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association, the country’s most prestigious award in the discipline of comparative literature.

Eating in the Underworld, by Rachel Zucker, was judged one of the best overall designs in the Poetry and Literature category of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Book, Jacket and Journal Show 2004.

Ann Daly was nominated for the Robert W. Hamilton Book Award 2004 for her book, Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture. Sponsored by the University Co-Operative Society, the award recognizes leading, published University of Texas faculty members.

Jerome Rothenberg (Writing Through: Translations and Variations) received the 2004 Alfonso X el Sabio Award, for excellence in contributions to the field of translation/interpreting studies, from San Diego State University.

The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s, by Mark Franko, was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2003 by CHOICE magazine.

Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power, by Anthony Shay, has received an honorable mention award from the 2003 Kurt Weill Prize committee, composed of representatives of the Kurt Weill Foundation, the American Musicological Society (AMS), the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and the Modern Language Association (MLA). The award is given biennially for Distinguished Scholarship in 20th Century Music Theater. Shay’s book was one of three works cited, the other two being the winners in the book and article categories.

Lise A. Waxer’s book, The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves and Popular Culture in Cali, Columbia, published by Wesleyan in 2002, received two esteemed honors in the field of music: the 2003 Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Alan P. Merriam Prize; and the 36th (2003) American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP)-Deems Taylor Award, Popular Music Books category.

Lucio Mariani (Echoes of Memory) was awarded one of Italy’s most prestigious poetry prizes, the 2003 Cardarelli Award

Honorée Fannone Jeffers, author of her second poetry book, Outlandish Blues, was awarded the Alan Collins Fellowship in Poetry at the 2003 Bread Load Writers’ Conference, one of America's oldest literary programs, held in August at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont.

Singing Our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music During the Great War, by Regina M. Sweeney, won the first 2003 IASPM-International Book Award given by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. The City of Musical Memory, by Lise A. Waxer, received special mention as a finalist.

Arcady, by Donald Revell, won the PEN Center USA 2003 Literary Award in Poetry. This is the second time Revell was so honored, the first being for the book New Dark Ages (Wesleyan, 1990). Wesleyan was also honored by producing three of the other four finalists: Barbara Guest, Miniatures and Other Poems; Walter K. Lew, Treadwinds: poems and intermedia texts; and Nathaniel Tarn, Selected Poems 1950–2000.

Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Texts, by Walter K. Lew, won in the poetry category of the Sixth Annual 2003 Asian American Literary Awards, given by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, by Justine Larbalestier, is a finalist for the 2003 Hugo Best Related Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Aurealis Magazine’s 2002 Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award.

Arcady, by Donald Revell, won the Utah Book Award 2002 for Poetry, and was selected one of the eight “Best Poetry Books of 2002” by Publishers Weekly.

Breath, by Antonia Pozzi, translated by Lawrence Venuti, was chosen as one of three finalists for the PEN American Center Eighth Annual 2003 Award for Poetry in Translation.

Four poems from Eating in the Underworld, by Rachel Zucker, won the Strousse Award for Best Poem or Group of Poems for 2002.

Miniatures, by Barbara Guest, was voted one of the eleven Best Poetry Books of 2002 by Library Journal, and was a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Association (BABRA) Award in Poetry for 2003.

Bright Balkan Morning, by Dick Blau, Charles and Angeliki Keil, and Steven Feld, was named in 2003 the Best Non-Fiction or “Book of Information” Award from Greenman Review, on on-line site that has 200,000 readers each month.

The City of Musical Memory, by Lise Waxer, and The ’Hood Comes First, by Murray Forman, were selected as finalists for the 2003 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ASRC) Awards for Excellence, the former in the category of Best Research in Recorded Folk or Ethnic Music, and the latter for Best Research in Recorded Rock, Rhythm & Blues, or Soul.

Wesleyan author Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War, earned the Oklahoma Center for the Book’s 2003 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dreams and Drama: Psychoanalytic Criticism, Creativity and the Artist, by Alan Roland, was nominated for the 2003 Gradiva Book Award, given by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP).

Choreographic Politics: State Folk Companies, Representation and Power, by Anthony Shay, and Perspectives on Korean Dance, by Judy Van Zile, have been selected for the 2003 CORD Outstanding Publication Award, given by the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD).

Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders, by Helena Simonett, was runner-up for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) - US Chapter 2002 Book Award.

Singing Our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music During the Great War, by Regina M. Sweeney, was chosen as an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2002 by CHOICE magazine.

Selected Poems: 1950-2000, by Nathaniel Tarn, was honored as one of five finalists for the prestigious 2002 Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award, sponsored by the PBK Society and the Winston Foundation.

The Abortion Myth: Feminism, Morality and the Hard Choices Women Make, by Leslie Cannold, and The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts, by David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus, received “outstanding” marks in the ALA 2002 University Press Books Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 12th Edition.

Veil, by Rae Armantrout, was a finalist in the Poetry category for the 2002 PEN Center USA Literary Awards.

Reason and Unreason: Psychoanalysis, Science and Politics, by Michael Rustin, won a 2002 Gradiva Book Award, given by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis for the best published, produced or publicly exhibited work that advances psychoanalysis.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis (Drafts 1-38: Toll) won a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Poetry, and The Roy Harvey Pearce / Archive for New Poetry Prize in 2002.

Trans, by Hilda Raz, was recognized by the Nebraska Center for the Book as a winner of the 2002 Nebraska Book Awards, in the Poetry category.

Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, by Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, made the PSLA “Top Forty,” the 2001 list recommended by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association.

Anarchy, by John Cage, was judged Best Scholarly Typographic, and Cascadia, by Brenda Hillman, was judged Best Cover design, in the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Book, Jacket and Journal Show 2002.

Cascadia, by Brenda Hillman was selected as a Poetry finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA) awards for 2002.

Jill Dolan, author of Geographies of Learning: Theory and Practice, Activism and Performance, was nominated for the University of Texas 2002 Robert W. Hamilton Book Award.

Yusef Komunyakaa (Pleasure Dome) won the Modern Poetry Association’s Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2001.

The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization, by Rhustom Bharucha, was chosen as an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2001 by CHOICE magazine.

Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, translated by Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov, won the 2001 Griffin Prize for Poetry.

Trilce, by César Vallejo, translated by Clayton Eshleman, won the 2001 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

Silent Stars, by Jeanine Basinger, and Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan, by Rockwell Kent, were selected as ALA 2001 “Outstanding Books” for Public and Secondary Libraries, Eleventh Edition.

Critical Theory and Science Fiction, by Carl Freedman, was selected by CHOICE as one of the “Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000.”

Jean Valentine (The Cradle of Real Life) won the Poetry Society of America’s (PSA) Shelley Memorial Award, 2000.

Listening to Salsa, by Frances Aparicio, won the 1999 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and culture.

Barbara Guest (Miniatures) was honored with the PSA’s Frost Medal for lifetime achievement in 1999.

Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction, by Keith Negus, won the 1998 International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Award.

Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music / Consuming Technology, by Paul Théberge, won the 1997 International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Award.

Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture, by Eric Greene, originally published in 1996, won the Golden Scroll Award of Merit for Outstanding Achievement from the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror Films.

The Education of Desire, by William Dickey, received the BABRA Poetry award in 1996.

The collection, Rider, by Mark Rudman, won the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award for poetry in 1995.

Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, by Tricia Rose, won the 1995 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, by Yusef Komunyakaa, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, by Yusef Komunyakaa, won the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, by Robert Walser, won the 1993 Irving Lowens Award for the best book in American Music from the Sonneck Society for American Music.

David Ignatow (I Have A Name) was co-winner of the PSA’s Frost Medal in 1992.

Selected Poems, by James Tate, won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

In Mad Love and War, by Joy Harjo, won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

In Mad Love and War, by Joy Harjo, won the 1991 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Liberazione della Donna: Feminism in Italy, by Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, won the Before Columbus American Book Award in 1987, and Queen of the Ebony Isles, by Colleen McElvoy, won the same in 1985.

Country Music: Selected Early Poems, by Charles Wright, won the National Book Award in Poetry for 1983.

David Ignatow, who wrote Rescue the Dead, among others, received the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1977.

Paul Horgan received Pulitzers in History for Lamy of Santa Fe in 1976 and for Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History in 1955.

The Glorious Revolution in America, by David S. Lovejoy, was finalist for the National Book Award in History, 1973.

Collected Poems, by James Wright, won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Buckdancer’s Choice: Poems, by James Dickey, won the 1966 National Book Award for Poetry.

Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town, by Sumner Chilton Powell, won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in History.

At the End of the Open Road, by Louis Simpson, won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.