Winner of 2011 May Swenson Poetry Award Announced

Travis Mossotti of St. Louis, Mo., is the winner of the 15th annual May Swenson Poetry Award, presented by Utah State University Press and the Literary Estate of May Swenson.

Mossotti will receive a cash award of $1,000, and his winning collection of poems, About the Dead will be published by USU Press in summer 2011.

Judge for the 2011 award was Garrison Keillor, writer, humorist and host of American Public Media’s A Writer’s Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion. Keillor selected Mossotti’s work from among 25 finalists chosen by a panel of professional poets and university teachers of poetry from the 700 entries submitted from across the United States and several countries abroad.

“There is some very impressive work here, and superb individual poems in every finalist manuscript,” Keillor said. “I wish I could write a personal note to so many of these poets.”

Mossotti, “still recovering from the shock,” said he felt honored — to be awarded the prize and to be selected by Keillor, a personality he greatly admires. Mossotti resides in St. Louis.

“Even for a poet, it’s difficult to articulate the personal elation of being awarded such a prize,” he said. “All I can say is that it’s an honor — an honor that doesn’t seem to diminish.”

Mossotti holds a master’s of fine art in poetry from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and a bachelor’s in English and French from Webster University in St. Louis. Recently a faculty lecturer at the University of California—Santa Cruz, his poetry appears widely in literary journals, including American Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Cream City Review, New York Quarterly, Passages North, RHINO, Southern Humanities Review and many others.

Mossotti won the James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review in 2009, and “Decampment,” the opening poem in About the Dead, was adapted to screen in 2010 as an animated short film. Other poems in the collection have been awarded individual prizes by literary magazines and publishers.

Keillor, the judge for the 2011 May Swenson Poetry Award, is a beloved and prolific figure in contemporary American letters. His daily radio and podcast program A Writer’s Almanac features poetry by a wide range of poets, including winners of the Swenson Poetry Award, for an international audience. Through A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor has showcased the work of Rita Dove, Billy Collins and many others, and has championed the role of poetry in both literary and vernacular culture.

The May Swenson?Poetry Award, an annual competition named for May Swenson, honors her as one of America’s most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was loved and praised by writers from virtually every school of American poetry. She left a legacy of 50-years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in Logan, Utah, her hometown.

Utah State University Press, a division of Utah State University’s Merrill-Cazier Library, is an award-winning scholarly publisher in several academic fields. USU Press proudly sponsors the annual May Swenson Poetry Award.

For more information on the Swenson Award, visit the USU Press website.

Source: USU Press

Contact: Michael Spooner, (435) 797-1362, michael.spooner@usu.edu