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Mary Szybist Wins Two Major Awards: NEA Grant and 12th Annual Witter Bynner Fellowship

Mary Szybist -- an Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College -- has been winning significant national awards and fellowships for her poetry. So far this year, Szybist has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant -- as well as the prestigious Witter Bynner Fellowship.

The Witter Bynner was a $10,000 grant that came along with a reading at the Library of Congress. On Feb. 26th of 2009, Mary read in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the Library's James Madison Building.

As Poet Laureate Kay Ryan said: "Mary Szybist's lovely musical touch is light and exact enough to catch the weight and grind of love. This is a hard paradox to master as she does."

Szybist is now at work on her second book of poems, which is tentatively titled Incarnadine.

"These grants are a boost of adrenaline to the writing process," said Szybist. "As I've worked on my current manuscript for the last few years, I have cycled through periods of faith and doubt, both about the poems and the project as a whole. To have the NEA select my work for this distinction is a great gift of validation."

Szybist's poetry has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, and Best American Poetry 2008. Her first book, Granted, was named one of the top ten books of poetry in 2003 by Library Journal.

Read more about Mary and listen to a podcast of her poems:

Szybist Podcast