June 6, 2018

Holmes Poetry Prize Goes to Jenny Xie

Poet and Princeton alumna Jenny Xie has been selected as the latest recipient of the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize awarded by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University.

The Holmes National Poetry Prize was established in memory of Princeton 1951 alumnus Theodore H. Holmes and is presented each year to a poet of special merit as selected by the faculty of the Creative Writing Program. The award, currently carrying a prize of $5,000, was first made to Mark Doty in 2011 and has since also been awarded to Evie Shockley, Natalie Diaz, Matt Rasmussen, Eduardo Corral, and Claudia Rankine.

Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Nowhere to Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017), recipient of the Drinking Gourd Prize. She holds a BA from Princeton University, Class of 2008, and an MFA from New York University’s Creative Writing Program, and she has received fellowships and support from Kundiman, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Bread Loaf, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Poets & Writers. She teaches at New York University.