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Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith Launches “American Conversations”

Posted by: Anne Holmes

At the end of this month, Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will kick off her second-year project, “American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities,” with visits to communities around the state of Alaska. In the coming months, coordinated with Center for the Book state affiliates, she’ll also travel to rural communities in South Dakota, Maine, …

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Ariel Dorfman and “La Voz Latina”

Posted by: Anne Holmes

The following introduction is written by Marie Arana, curator of “La Voz Latina”; literary advisor to the Library of Congress; coordinator of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction; and literary director of the National Book Festival. This past weekend, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, we were thrilled to …

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Refreshing the “Poetry of America” Series: Five New Recordings Added

Posted by: Anne Holmes

It’s been an exciting spring and summer for digital initiatives at the Poetry and Literature Center. Over the past few months, we’ve released streaming audio of 50 newly digitized recordings from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, and we’ve aired the first full season of the PLC’s inaugural podcast series. Today, we kick off …

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Nominations Open for 2018 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry

Posted by: Anne Holmes

Attention, poetry publishers: The Library of Congress is now accepting nominations for the 2018 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry! The $10,000 prize, first awarded to James Merrill in 1990 for The Inner Room, is given biennially to an American poet for the most distinguished book of poetry published during the previous two years—2016 and …

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New Podcast Episode: Juan Felipe Herrera and the National Book Festival Youth Poetry Slam

Posted by: Anne Holmes

For your listening pleasure, the sixth episode of From the Catbird Seat—our new poetry podcast series—is up on our website and on iTunes. In this sixth installment, we revisit the 2015 Youth Poetry Slam at the National Book Festival. The Youth Poetry Slam event debuted at the Festival just a year earlier, in 2014, as …

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Podcast Episode 4 Now Available: Natasha Trethewey and Rosanne Cash

Posted by: Anne Holmes

Today marks the half-way point for our poetry podcast series, From the Catbird Seat. Tune in now for Episode 4! In this newest installment of From the Catbird Seat, Rob Casper chats with former Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey about her 2013 event at the Library with singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash. At the time, Cash was completing a …