The Diplomat
Franklin & Marshall’s weekly online newsletter
Prestigious Lannan Fellowship Goes to Ford
Katie Ford
Franklin & Marshall College Assistant Professor of English Katie Ford has been awarded a 2008 Lannan Fellowship.
The Lannan Foundation announced the recipients of the highly prestigious Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships celebrating excellence in poetry, fiction and nonfiction on Thursday, Nov. 20.
“I’m grateful to the Lannan Foundation for what it does for writers, literature and the arts,” Ford said. “I’m so honored that they believe in my work, and I’ll be writing and reading as vigorously as I can under their support, all the while learning with and from my student writers at Franklin & Marshall.”
The Lannan is a highly respected international literary prize. Only four writers per year receive a Lannan Fellowship, which comes with a $100,000 award. The use of the funds is unrestricted, but aims to encourage the recipient to concentrate on his or her writing.
Candidates for the awards and fellowships are recommended to the Foundation by a network of poets, writers, literary scholars, publishers and editors. Nominators are geographically dispersed and serve anonymously.
Franklin & Marshall Provost Ann Steiner said the fellowship is an honor for the College.
“This has been a remarkable year for Katie, with the publication of Colosseum and its selection by Publishers Weekly as one of the year’s best books,” Steiner said. “Her recognition by the Lannan Foundation affirms Katie’s entire career as a poet, a mark of the excellence of her work and confidence in her future. It is a tremendous honor for Franklin & Marshall for a member of our faculty to receive this prestigious award, and I am deeply proud.”
Ford is the author of two collections of poetry, Deposition, written in 2002, and Colosseum, published this year.
Colosseum is an emotional journey through Ford’s years in New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina.
The book was just selected as one of the five best poetry collections of 2008 by Publishers Weekly. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and Poets & Writers. Ford taught at Loyola University and at Reed College before coming to Franklin & Marshall in 2007. Ford is the poetry editor of The New Orleans Review.
“I’m surprised by both honors, and hope people will read the poets named by both Publishers Weekly and the Lannan Foundation in their 2008 lists,” Ford added.
The Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships were established in 1989 to honor both established and emerging writers whose work is of exceptional quality. Over the last 20 years, the Lannan Foundation, through its awards and fellowships program, has awarded 176 writers and poets nearly $14 million. Lannan Literary Fellowships recognize writers of distinctive literary merit who demonstrate potential for continued outstanding work.
Through its Literary Awards and Fellowships program, the Foundation hopes to stimulate the creation of literature written originally in the English language and to develop a wider audience for contemporary prose and poetry.
