By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 2-21-07
Rodney Jones
GREENSBORO, NC – An alumnus of the MFA Writing Program at UNCG has won the prestigious 2007 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award – an honor that comes with $100,000.
Rodney Jones, who graduated from UNCG’s MFA program in 1973, won for his ninth book, “Salvation Blues: 100 Poems, 1985-2005.” The collection, published last year by Houghton-Mifflin, includes 76 previously published poems and 24 new poems.
Jones, a professor and distinguished scholar of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, joins a long list of distinguished UNCG alumni. In the past year, MFA alumna Claudia Emerson took home the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and theater alumna Beth Leavel won the Tony Award.
The Kingsley Tufts Award is given annually by Claremont Graduate University in California. It offers the nation’s largest purse for a mid-career poet.
Jones has also won the Harper Lee Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award and the Academy of American Poets Lavan Younger Poets Award. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and earned a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He will receive the award in April in Los Angeles.
