Poet Laureate Alison Pelegrin to Use $50,000 Prize to Bring Poetry to Prisons, Community Centers
New Orleans / Aug. 12, 2024 — The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) is thrilled to announce that the Academy of American Poets (AAP) has awarded Louisiana’s Alison Pelegrin a Poet Laureate Fellowship. The Academy’s Poet Laureate Fellowship, which is supported by the Mellon Foundation, funds the work of select poets laureate around the country.
The Academy of American Poets, a leading champion of poets and poetry for 90 years, announced on Aug. 6 that it will award $50,000 each to 22 poets serving as poets laureate in cities and states across the United States. The academy’s Poet Laureate Fellowships recognize laureates’ literary excellence while enabling them to undertake meaningful and innovative projects that enrich the lives of community members, including youth, through responsive and interactive poetry activities.
“Poems bridge distances between people,” said Ricardo Maldonado, president and executive director of the academy. “For 90 years, the Academy of American Poets has honored how poets nourish our spirit through poems, inviting us to reflect and commit to each other. I am excited to celebrate the work of our Poet Laureate Fellows across the country, elevating civil discourse and reminding us of the true possibility of a shared future.”
Pelegrin’s fellowship will support her Lifelines Prison Poetry Project, which will facilitate poetry workshops in 10 prisons and jails and five community centers. She will create a project website featuring four Lifelines podcasts, each of which will introduce a poetry prompt. Selected excerpts inspired by each prompt will be printed on posters to be distributed statewide. As a culminating event, Pelegrin will present the project at the New Orleans Poetry Festival.
“I am so thankful to the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation for their recognition and support of this meaningful work,” said Pelegrin of the award.
Gov. Jon Bel Edwards selected Pelegrin as Louisiana’s Poet Laureate in 2023. Her tenure continues through August 2025, during which time Pelegrin will continue traveling the state encouraging fellow Louisianans to explore and engage with poetry.
“The Poet Laureate acts as Louisiana’s literary ambassador, and Alison’s long record of teaching, sharing, and producing poetry that engages readers makes her a perfect fit as the preeminent poet of our state,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards at the time of her selection. “Her work is both beautifully crafted and appeals to a broad range of readers, and it will undoubtedly help elevate poetry in the public consciousness. She has been celebrated both statewide and nationally for good reason.”
“Over the last year, Alison, like so many of our previous Poets Laureate, has taken to heart the charge of the position: connecting Louisianans with poetry in a real, tangible way,” said Miranda Restovic, executive director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, which oversees the nomination process and sponsors Poet Laureate programming. “The academy has recognized her commitment to public engagement with this fellowship, and we look forward to working with her to elevate poetry in Louisiana even further.”
Pelegrin is the author of several collections, including “Our Lady of Bewilderment” (LSU Press, 2022), which won the Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award in Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the Foundation for Louisiana and the Louisiana Board of Regents. Pelegrin is writer-in-residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where she has taught for more than 20 years.
In addition to Pelegrin, the 2024 Poet Laureate Fellows and the communities they serve are Julia Bouwsma (Maine), Angelika Brewer (Ogden, Utah), Traci Brimhall (Kansas), Ching-In Chen (Redmond, Wash.), Kai Coggin (Hot Springs, AR), Nandi Comer (Michigan), Tongo Eisen-Martin (San Francisco, Calif.), Heid E. Erdrich (Minneapolis, Minn.), Andrea Gibson (Colorado), Amanda Johnston (Texas), Patricia Spears Jones (New York), Charlotte Pence (Mobile, Ala.), Georgia A. Popoff (Onondaga County, N.Y.), Jean Prokott (Rochester, Minn.), Joseph Rios (Fresno, Calif.), Lois Roma-Deeley (Scottsdale, Ariz.), Emily Schulten (Key West, Fla.), Tess Taylor (El Cerrito, Calif.), Arianne True (Washington State), Kerri Webster (Idaho), and Avery R. Young (Chicago, Ill.).
If organizations are interested in bringing the Louisiana Poet Laureate to their communities more information on applying for programming support can be found at https://leh.org/our-work/special-initiatives/louisiana-poet-laureate/.
About Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is a non‐profit organization dedicated to providing educational opportunities to all residents of the state. Guided by the vision that everyone can realize their full potential through the humanities, LEH partners with communities, institutions and individuals to provide grant‐supported outreach programs, literacy initiatives for all ages, publications, film and radio documentaries, museum exhibitions, public lectures, library projects, 64 Parishes magazine and other diverse public humanities programming. For more information, visit www.leh.org.
About the Academy of American Poets
Celebrating its 90th anniversary in 2024, the Academy of American Poets is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry across the United States. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to more than 200 poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program. It also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; established and organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture. To learn more about the Academy of American Poets, including its staff, its Board of Directors, and its Board of Chancellors, visit https://poets.org/.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through its grants, the Mellon Foundation seeks to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.
