CHARLES SIMIC RECEIVES SARAH JOSEPHA HALE AWARD

The Trustees of the Richards Free Library are pleased to announce that Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Charles Simic is the Sarah Josepha Hale Award winner for 2004.

Charles Simic, a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, has written over twenty-five volumes of poetry as well as six non-fiction prose works. He has translated other poets and contributed poetry to more than a hundred magazines.

In addition to the Pulitzer awarded in 1990, Mr. Simic has won the MacArthur, National Endowment for the Arts, and Guggenheim fellowship, numerous prizes for poetry and the PEN International Award for translation twice.

The Georgia Review has called him "one of the wisest poets of his generation, and one of the best." The Chicago Review described Mr. Simic's work as "some of the most strikingly original poetry of our time." Mr. Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 15, finally settling in Chicago. He received his B.A. from New York University in 1967. He came to the University of New Hampshire in 1973. He resides in Strafford with his wife.

The Sarah Josepha Hale Award, presented annually since 1956, goes to a writer who, through his or her life work, maintains a connection to New England. Selection is by a panel of twelve judges. Named for Sarah Josepha Hale, the award honors the contribution of one of 19th Century America's most powerful women. The Newport author of several books and hundreds of poems shaped the opinion of American women for 40 years through her editorials in Godey's Lady's Magazine. The Sarah Josepha Hale Award presentation will take place on October 16, 2004 at the Newport Opera House. For more information please contact Andrea Thorpe at (603) 863-3430 or rfl@newport.lib.nh.us.