The deadline for the 2018 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize is approaching. ABOUT THE PRIZE: Awarded annually for a first full-length book of poems. Named after the first director of the Press, the prize carries a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Pitt Poetry Series. Winner will be announced in the fall of 2018. DEADLINE: Manuscripts must be received during March and April 2018 (postmarked on or after March 1 and on or before April 30). Each manuscript must include an entry fee of $25.00. We asked several past Starrett Prize winners to tell us what…

University of Pittsburgh Presents the Drue Heinz Literature Prize Reading Thursday, Oct. 6, 7 p.m. O’Hara Student Center 4024 O’Hara St. Pittsburgh, PA  15213 Free, open to the public Followed by book signing Featuring Melissa Yancy Author of Dog Years Winner of the 2016 Drue Heinz Literature Prize Richard Russo Judge Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of Everybody’s Fool Dog Years Melissa Yancy “Yancy breaks through her characters’ surfaces of isolation and pretense to explore the uncharted yet universal depths of human emotion. Opening with the title story, a vignette about a couple, both geneticists, grappling with their son’s muscular dystrophy in…

CONGRATULATIONS Ross Gay, author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, has won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. The NBCC awards were presented Thursday evening in New York City. Gay is one of six acclaimed African American poets who will participate in a landmark event on Monday on the Pitt campus—“Poetry and Race in America: How the Humanities Engage with Social Issues.” The NBCC award is the latest in a whirlwind of honors for Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. Gay recently won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, was a 2015 National Book Award finalist, and a 2015 finalist…

If you have yet to publish a full-length book of poems send us your manuscript between March 1- April 30, 2016 for a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Pitt Poetry Series. See the full details here. We would like to congratulate Miriam Bird Greenberg, who was just announced as the 2015 winner of the prize for her collection In the Volcano’s Mouth. Miriam was born in 1980 and grew up in rural Texas. She studied English and studio arts at the University of Pittsburgh, earned an MFA in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers, and currently…

CONGRATULATIONS The University of Pittsburgh Press has been proud to take this journey with Ross Gay, and to share the acclaim for his brilliant collection, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. May his future as a poet be bright and rewarding! Congratulations to all of the winners of the 2015 National Book Award: Robin Coste Lewis, Neal Shusterman, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Adam Johnson. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude Ross Gay University of Pittsburgh Press Pitt Poetry Series 2015 National Book Award Finalist “The Bloomington Community Orchard must have spread its roots into Ross Gay, an Indiana University English professor, as the organic poems in his third collection bear fruit,…