The Sewanee Review
Awards

• Wesley McNair, a contributor to the Sewanee Review for nearly two decades, has recently been appointed to be Maine’s Poet Laureate—an appropriate honor for this poet of place.  At McNair’s acceptance speech, he outlined his obligations as poet laureate: “by putting poetry directly into the laps and laptops of readers everywhere around…we’ll remind our fellow Mainers that poetry is not only for the special days of weddings, funerals, and commencements, but for the every day of our lives.”  McNair’s new and selected, Lovers of the Lost, was published last year by David R. Godine publishers.

• Maxine Kumin, winner of the Pultizer Prize and our own Aiken Taylor Award in Modern Poetry (1995), recently earned the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Where I Live, a book of poetry that David Kirby of the New York Times calls a “deeply satisfying collection.”

• Aiken Taylor Award-winning poets and frequent Sewanee Review contributors Wendell Berry and Donald Hall have both been honored by President Barack Obama for their contributions to American letters. Obama presented the National Medal of Arts to Donald Hall on Wednesday, March 2nd. The president remarked that Hall’s work has “inspired Americans and enhanced the role of poetry in our national life.” A few moments later he presented the National Humanities Medal to Wendell Berry, citing Berry’s “achievements as a poet, novelist, farmer, and conservationist . . . exploring our relationship with the land and community.”
  
  
• First published in the summer 2009 issue of the SR, Marlin Barton's short story "Into Silence" was selected for Best American Short Stories 2010, an anthology edited this year by Richard Russo. It was also selected as a notable for Best American Mystery Stories 2010, edited by Otto Penzler and Lee Child. Also chosen for Best American Short Stories 2010 is "Painted Ocean, Painted Ship" (Ploughshares) by Rebecca Makkai, whose story, "The World's Last Englishmen," was published in our fall 2007 issue.
  
  
• Notables for Best American Short Stories 2010 included Wendell Berry’s “The Dark Country” from our spring 2009 issue and Jean Ross Justice’s “The Smell of Ashes” from summer 2009.
  
  
• Two stories originally published in our summer 2010 issue have been selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2011: Brock Adams's "Audacious" and Ernest J. Finney's "A Crime of Opportunity.”
  
  
• B. H. Fairchild's "On the Waterfront," published in our winter 2009 issue with two other poems under the collective title "City Voices and Scenes," has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry of 2010, edited this year by Amy Gerstler.
  
  
• Three essays published by the SR have been selected as notables for Best American Essays 2010, guest edited by Christopher Hitchens: Earl Rovit’s “Friends Indeed” from our winter 2009 issue; Elizabeth Moulton’s “Beyond Resignation,” published in the same issue; and Mel Livatino’s “In Search of a Golden Bird upon a Bough of Memory” from the spring 2009 issue. Livatino's essay "Certain Slant of Light" from our fall 2004 issue was also a notable essay in Best American Essays 2005, edited by Susan Orlean and Robert Atwan.