Earlier this month, The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced their prestigious awards in literature. The prizes, totalling $350,000, honour both established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry.

Stephen Sexton, lecturer in Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s, follows in the footsteps of previous winners including Sinead Morrissey, Colm Toibin, and Seamus Heaney. As part of the award he receives $20,000 to travel and stay in the US.

Stephen’s debut collection, If All the World and Love Were Young (Penguin, 2019) has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, been shortlisted for the John Pollard Poetry Prize, and long listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize. It was a Sunday Times, New Statesman, and Telegraph Book of the Year 2019.

For the full story visit the Seamus Heaney Centre website