Harvard University Divinity Student Wins the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award

Ariana Reines has won the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her latest poetry collection, A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019). A New York Times reviewer wrote that “her writing is queer and raunchy, raw and occult, seemingly never pulling away from her deepest vulnerabilities. Yet Reines simultaneously maintains a feeling of epic poetry, of ancient intention. She moves between worlds in search of the divine and the self.”

The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, which comes with a $100,000 prize, is given annually by Claremont Graduate University in California to a poet who “is past the very beginning but not yet reached the pinnacle of his or her career.” The $100,000 prize is the largest in the world for a single volume of poetry.

In addition to her being an award-winning poet, Reines is also an Obie Award-winning playwright, performing artist, and translator. She is currently a divinity student at Harvard University.

Reines was the 2009 Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at the University of California Berkeley. She has also taught at Pomona College, the University of California Davis, and the University of Pittsburgh.