For Immediate Release
Contact: Maria Mazziotti Gillan (973) 684-6555
Date: November 16, 2011
The Poetry Center Recognizes Poets
for Lifetime Service to Literature
The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College has announced that Grace Cavalieri, Stanley H. Barkan, James Haba, and Vivian Shipley are the recipients of the 2011 Paterson Literary Review Award for Lifetime Service to Literature.
“Each of the winners of the 2011 Paterson Literary Review Award has dedicated many years to serving the needs of writers and to bringing other writers to national and international attention. In doing so, each has contributed greatly to literature and enriched the lives of readers everywhere,” says Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Executive Director of the Poetry Center.
ABOUT THE HONOREES:
Grace Cavalieri has produced and hosted “The Poet and the Poem,” weekly, on WPFW-FM (1977-1997) presenting 2,000 poets to the nation. She now presents this series to public radio from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite. Grace has received the Pen-Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and awards from the National Commission on Working Women, the WV Commission on Women, the American Association of University Women, and more. She won a Paterson Prize for What I Would do for Love, and The Bordighera Poetry Prize for Water on the Sun. She received the inaugural Columbia Merit Award for “significant contributions to poetry.”
Stanley H. Barkan is the founder/editor/publisher of the Cross-Cultural Review Series of World Literature and Art, that has, to date, produced some 400 titles in 50 different languages. Cross-Cultural Communications just celebrated its 40th Anniversary. He was the 1991 New York City’s Poetry Teacher of the Year (awarded by Poets House and the Board of Education), and the 1996 winner of the Poor Richard’s Award, “The Best of the Small Presses” (awarded by the Small Press Center), for “25 years of high quality publishing.” Along with Peter Thabit Jones, Barkan hosted the International Poetry Festival in June 2011 at the Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea, Wales. His latest book is the ABC of Fruits and Vegetables, which is illustrated by his daughter, Mia Barkan Clarke.
Jim Haba was Poetry Director for the Dodge Foundation and the designer and producer of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival—the nation’s largest poetry festival for 22 years—held biennially in Waterloo Village. Haba is a Professor Emeritus from Rowan University and holds a BA from Reed College and a Ph.D. He has been a special convener for the entire poetry community.
Vivian Shipley is Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor and Editor of Connecticut Review and teaches at Southern Connecticut State University. In 2010, an eighth book of poetry, All of Your Messages Have Been Erased, was published by Southeastern Louisiana University. A sixth chapbook, Greatest Hits: 1974-2010 was published in 2010 by Pudding House Press. She was inducted into the University of Kentucky Hall of Fame for Distinguished Alumni, the highest honor the university may bestow on a graduate.
The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College has been awarded several Citations of Excellence, named a Distinguished Arts Project and is funded, in part by a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, and made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts.
