含羞草传媒

Balakian wins Pulitzer Prize

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, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor in humanities, professor of English, and director of creative writing at 含羞草传媒, has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Ozone Journal, his collection of poems published last year by University of Chicago Press.

In making the announcement, the collection鈥檚 title poem, which takes readers back to 2009 when Balakian worked to exhume the bodies of Armenian genocide victims, buried for generations in the desert of Syria. 鈥淚n the dynamic, sensual language of these poems, we are reminded that the history of atrocity, trauma, and forgetting is both global and ancient,鈥 the committee wrote, 鈥渂ut we are reminded, too, of the beauty and richness of culture and the resilience of love.鈥

鈥淎ll of Peter鈥檚 work is marked by a profound ethical concern and an appreciation for how the past indelibly marks the present,鈥 said English professor , interim dean of the faculty and provost.

The Pulitzer Prize is the latest 鈥 and highest 鈥 praise for Balakian鈥檚 extensive writings. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America鈥檚 Response, a New York Times Notable Book and Best Seller, earned the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize. Black Dog of Fate, voted best book of the year by the New York Times, the LA Times, and Publisher鈥檚 Weekly, won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for the Art of the Memoir. His translation of Grigoris Balakian鈥檚 Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide 1915鈥1918 was a Washington Post book of the year.

鈥淎s a historian myself, I鈥檝e always admired Peter鈥檚 ability to capture the past and make it immediate to our present concerns,鈥 said Interim President .

For more from Balakian on poetry and memory, .