Victoria Chang, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Chair of Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has received the The Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection from the The Forward Foundation for her new volume of poetry, With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024). The United Kingdom-based organization presents the award annually alongside three other prizes for best first collection, best written single poem, and best performed single poem.
A professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Dr. Chang is the first Asian American and first woman to hold the Bourne Chair of Poetry. She also serves as director of the Poetry@Tech program, an organization dedicated to bringing high-profile and celebrated poets to share their work with Georgia Tech students and communities across the state. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 2023, Dr. Chang served as a professor and program chair for creative writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles. She has previously held writing and visiting faculty positions with Chapman University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.
In addition to With My Back to the World, Dr. Chang has written several other poetry collections including The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022) and OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). She also authored the nonfiction book, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief (Milkweed Editions, 2021).
Professor Chang is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she majored in East Asian studies. She holds a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford University, and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.