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12.15.2008

asian american poets awarded nea literature fellowships

Cool news on the literary front... I recently heard from Laotian American writer Bryan Thao Worra, who informs me that he, along with Jason Koo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and C. Dale Young were among the Asian American poets who received this year's Literature Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. This is wonderful news for these artists.

Literature Fellowships are "the Arts Endowment's most direct investment in American creativity, encouraging the production of new work and allowing writers the time and means to write." The fellowships alternate annually between poetry and prose. For 2009, 42 poets will receive fellowships of $25,000 each. This year there were over 1,000 applications from across the US. Congratulations to the new fellows.