Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera selected Red Earth MFA faculty mentor Allison Hedge Coke for the 2016 Witter Bynner Fellowship.
Herrera will introduce a program celebrating Hedge Coke during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., onMarch 9.
Hedge Coke will receive a $10,000 fellowship. This is the 19th year that the fellowship has been awarded. Hedge Coke is the author of four poetry collections: “Streaming” (2015); “Blood Run” (2006 UK, 2007 US); “Off-Season City Pipe” (2005); “Dog Road Woman” (1997); a memoir “Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer” (2014); and a chapbook “Year of the Rat” (1996).
Her honors include an American Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.
She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lannan Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony for the Arts. Hedge Coke is the editor of eight poetry collections, one titled “Sing: Poetry From the Indigenous Americas” (2011) was named a Best Book of 2011 by the National Books Critics Circle's Critical Mass.
