Melissa Range, associate professor of English at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, is the recipient of the 2025 Vanderbilt University Literary Prize for her poetry collection, Printer’s First.
The award will allow Dr. Range to publish her collection in print, electronic, and audio formats by Vanderbilt University Press. She will also receive a $10,000 honorarium, an invitation to read in the Gertrude C. and Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series, and a one-week residency on Vanderbilt’s campus in Nashville, Tennessee.
Scheduled for publication in March 2026, Printer’s First is about the abolitionist movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Leveraging her extensive research on the myriad of antislavery publications during that era, Dr. Range’s collection tells the story of a political movement, with a particular focus on its print culture.
A Lawrence University faculty member since 2014, Dr. Range teaches courses on creative writing, nineteenth-century American literature, and contemporary poetry, with a particular emphasis on women writers and writers of color. In addition to Printer’s First, she is the author of two other poetry collections: Scriptorium (Beacon Press, 2016) and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010).
Dr. Range holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee, a master of fine arts degree from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, a master of theological studies degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.