A poet at Vanderbilt University was named one of “Forty Favorite Poets” by Essence magazine in honor of its 40th anniversary.
Stephanie Pruitt, who will receive her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing May 14 at Vanderbilt’s Commencement ceremonies, was listed alongside such luminaries as Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Marilyn Nelson and Gwendolyn Brooks.
“I did a double take when I saw my name in the proximity of so many of the writers I have long admired,” Pruitt said. “It’s nice to be recognized and I take this as a nod that I’m moving in the right direction, but success for me comes one poem at a time.”
Pruitt, a native of Nashville, has received the 2010 Academy of American Poets Prize and the 2009 Sedberry Prize, and was a finalist for Poet and Writers’ Maureen Egen Award.
Her current projects include a manuscript of historically inspired poems exploring the lives of two half-sisters from 1840-1860 as they escape from a Middle Tennessee plantation and settle in the North. In preparation for writing the narrative and lyric poems in her collection, Pruitt did research in a number of historic sites and archives around the United States, many in Tennessee including Belle Meade Plantation and The Hermitage, President Andrew Jackson’s home. Her poems present a constructed narrative with a backbone of documented, historical places and occurrences.
Here’s an excerpt from Pruitt’s poem Black Pepper 1841 :
Knowing one day, others may run
cook stows it away
in apron pockets as she prepares
a meal she will not sit down to eat
Teaspoons of crushed black gold
coating boot heels with hope
that it will defeat the hounds
Let those well seasoned feet run.
Vanderbilt launched its MFA creative writing program in 2006 and has already won national attention. Poets & Writers magazine ranked the program No. 18 in the country in its November/December 2009 issue. The magazine evaluated programs in eight categories, including size, length of study, cost of living, teaching load and curriculum focus. P&W found Vanderbilt – which admits three poetry and three fiction writers to its program each year – to have the fourth most selective program in the country.
Faculty in the MFA creative writing program includes fiction writers Tony Earley, Lorraine Lopez, Alice Randall and Nancy Reisman; poets Mark Jarman, Sandy Solomon, Beth Bachman, Kate Daniels and Rick Hilles; and nonfiction writer Peter Guralnick.
For more information, visit http://www.vanderbilt.edu/english/creative_writing .
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu