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Camille Dungy has been named the 13th recipient of the Paul Engle Prize, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization. Dungy is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University who has been honored with several awards over the course of her career, including the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry. In her work she addresses issues around ecology and environmentalism, motherhood and race. Her books include 2023’s Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also has four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to bring African American environmental poetry to national attention. She is poetry editor for Orion magazine, and hosts “Immaterial,” a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnificent Noise that explores the materials used in the creation of works of art. Dungy said she was honored to be selected for this year’s prize, particularly given her ties to Iowa City. She graduated from West High School, and her parents had long affiliations with the University of Iowa. “In Iowa City, I learned what it meant to be a literary citizen, and I came to understand that this was just the type of writer I wanted to become,” she continued. “So here I am, no longer a high school kid, but still working every day to be the best literary citizen I can be. To be seen in this way, for this award, honored with the Paul Engle Prize from the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature! Good day almighty! I almost find myself without words.”

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