Shenandoah Awards Graybeal-Gowan Prize for Virginia Poets
Jennifer Key of Dallas, Texas has been named winner of the annual Graybeal-Gowan Prize for Virginia Poets offered by Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review for the best poem entered by a Virginia poet. She will receive a cash award of $500, and her poem “Jefferson’s Daughters” appears on the magazine’s website, shenandoah.wlu.edu. A commemorative brochure of the poem has also been printed by the Virginia Poetry Center, housed at Washington and Lee. Final judge for the 2009 prize was Brendan Galvin of Truro, Massachusetts, recipient of the O. B. Hardison Poetry Prize and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005 (LSU, 2005) was a National Book Award finalist.
Key is a native of southwest Virginia and was educated at the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. In 2006 she was the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and won the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, The Antioch Review, The Carolina Quarterly and The Southwest Review , which awarded her the McGinnis-Ritchie Prize for 2008. She is Frensley Visiting Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University.
The Graybeal-Gowan Prize is dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Priscilla Gowan Graybeal’s father, Howerton Gowan, W&L ’30, a lifelong lover of poetry. The prize is donated by Mrs. Graybeal and her husband James (W&L ’49).
Submissions to the annual Graybeal-Gowan Prize for Virginia Poets are welcomed from all writers born in Virginia, as well as those with current legal residency of a year or more. No entry fee is required. Poets may enter as many as three poems and should send submissions, postmarked between October 1 and November 15, 2010, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a brief biography establishing eligibility, to:
Graybeal-Gowan Prize
Shenandoah
Mattingly House
2 Lee Avenue
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450-2116.
For more information contact R. T. Smith at 540/458-8908 or rodsmith@wlu.edu.
