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Washington and Lee’s Leah Naomi Green receives Lucille Clifton Legacy Award

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Leah Naomi Green
Leah Naomi Green. Photo courtesy Washington and Lee University.

Leah Naomi Green, visiting assistant professor of English at Washington and Lee University, will receive the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award from St. Mary’s College of Maryland on March 1.

The event will feature poetry readings by Green and reflections to honor Lucille Clifton, former Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at St. Mary’s College.

To register for the free online event in advance, visit www.smcm.edu/lucille-clifton.

Green’s first full-length poetry collection, “The More Extravagant Feast,” was selected as the winner of the 2019 Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets. Her chapbook, “The Ones We Have,” received the 2012 Flying Trout Chapbook prize. She is the associate editor of W&L’s literary magazine, Shenandoah.

Lucille Clifton was one of the most distinguished poets of her time. She won the National Book Award for Poetry and was the first Black recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement.

In 1987, Clifton became the first author to have two books of poetry — “Good Woman” and “Next” — chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. She was named a Library Lion of the New York Public Library in 1996, served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and was elected a fellow in literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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