Photo by Michael Dantzler
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHORT BIO
Len Lawson is the author of Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019) and the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017). He is also co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017) and The Future of Black: Afrofuturism and Black Comics Poetry (Blair Press, 2021). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He received the Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship and others including from Callaloo, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Obsidian Foundation UK. His poetry appears in African American Review, Callaloo, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Len is also a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, earning the 2020 IUP Outstanding Doctoral Student Award. He has taught English in South Carolina higher education for over ten years.
EXTENDED BIO
Education
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Ph.D. Candidate, English Literature & Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
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Master of Arts, English, National University
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Bachelor of Science, Business Administration, Winthrop University
Academic/Scholarly Honors
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Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society
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2020 IUP Outstanding Doctoral Student Award
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2013 SCICU Excellence in Teaching Award
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2012-13 Morris College Professor of the Year Award
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2011-12 Morris College Advisor of the Year Award
Poetry Awards/Honors
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2020 Pen Parentis Scholarship020
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2019 Emrys Foundation Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship
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2018 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Prize Finalist
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2018 Richland County Library "Ten South Carolina Poets to Watch"
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2016 Jasper Magazine Artist of the Year in Literary Arts
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2016 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize Finalist
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2016 Yellow Chair Review Chapbook Competition Finalist
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2015 Berfrois Poetry Prize Finalist (UK; inaugural)
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2015, 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominee
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2015, 2016 Best of the Net Nominee
Poetry Fellowships/Writers Retreats
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2021 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship
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2020 Obsidian Foundation Fellowship (UK; inaugural)
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2020 SC Academy of Authors Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship in Poetry
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2018 NC Poetry Society Susan Laughter Myers Poetry Fellowship (inaugural)
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2018 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship
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2017 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship
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2016 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop Fellowship
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2014, 2020 Watering Hole Fellowship
Poetry Positions held
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2020 Associate Poetry Editor, Poets Reading the News
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2020 Guest Editor, Glass Poetry Journal
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2017-2019 Poetry Reader, Up the Staircase Quarterly