American Academy Honors Alums, Faculty
The American Academy of Arts and Letters honored Safiya Sinclair '10, Lee Clay Johnson '07, and MFA faculty Kathleen Graber.
Sinclair is the recipient of the $10,000 Addison M. Metcalf award, which is given to a young writer of fiction, nonfiction, drama, or poetry. Sinclair's first collection, Cannibal, won the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and has been longlisted for the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Johnson received the $5,000 Sue Kauffman Prize for First Fiction, which honors a debut work from the previous year. His debut, Nitro Mountain has been widely praised since its release in 2016. Past recipients of the Kauffman Prize include Bennington faculty Brando Skyhorse.
Kathleen Graber received the $10,000 Arts and Letters Award in Literature, which recognizes "exceptional accomplishment" across genres. Ann Goldstein '71 received the award in 2015.