Eye Level has been awarded the 2017 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and the 2018 Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton’s Creative Writing Program in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Xie, who was born in Hefei, China and raised in New Jersey, is also the author of Nowhere to Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017), which received the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize. Currently teaching at New York University, Xie holds both a degree from Princeton and a degree from NYU's Creative Writing Program.

The Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected this year by US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Hererra, includes not just publication of the prize-winning manuscript but a six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy. The Academy of American Poets’ announcement notes that, “established in 1975, the Walt Whitman Award is designed to encourage the work of emerging poets. Previous recipients include poets Nicole Cooley, Suji Kwock Kim, Eric Pankey, Matt Rasmussen, and Alberto Ríos.”

In their announcement of the Holmes National Poetry Prize, The Lewis Center writes that this “prize was established in memory of Princeton 1951 alumnus Theodore H. Holmes and is presented each year to a poet of special merit as selected by the faculty of the Creative Writing Program, which includes writers Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and Susan Wheeler. The award was first made to Mark Doty in 2011 and has since also been awarded to Evie Shockley, Natalie Diaz, Matt Rasmussen, Eduardo Corral, and Claudia Rankine.”

Look for the forthcoming English Department’s 2018 Newsletter which will include Rebecca Rainof’s interview with Jenny Xie.