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UNC poet Alan Shapiro receives award for best poetry by a North Carolinian

By KATIE BLIXT
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- English professor Alan Shapiro at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association 2002 Roanoke-Chowan Award Nov. 15 for his poetry volume "Song and Dance: Poems."

The prize recognized this year’s best volume of poetry by a North Carolinian. Shapiro’s award marks the second year in a row that a faculty member in UNC's creative writing program has won. English professor Michael McFee shared the award last year with North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell.

"In winning this year’s Roanoke-Chowan Award, Alan Shapiro has once again distinguished himself as one of our state's -- and nation’s -- leading poets, and in doing so he brings yet another honor and continued distinction to the university’s creative writing program," said Bland Simpson, program director.

"Song and Dance: Poems" documents reactions to the death of Shapiro’s brother, a Broadway actor, who had brain cancer. Shapiro’s poems recount the emotional journey using couplets, prose, poems and free verse.

His nonfiction book, "Vigil," won the Discovery Award from the New England Booksellers Association. The book details the last four weeks of his sister’s life; she died of breast cancer in 1995. Another previous work, "The Last Happy Occasion," was nominated for the National Books Circle Award. Shapiro also won an O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Shapiro’s other books include "Happy Hour," winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and "Mixed Company," winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.

"The Dead Alive and Busy," Shapiro’s sixth book of poetry, won the 2001 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for emerging poets, administered at Claremont Graduate University in California. He has received two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and other honors.

Shapiro joined the UNC faculty in 1995. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

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(Blixt is a junior journalism and mass communication major from Bermuda Run)

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Contact: Dee Reid at (919) 843-6339 or deereid@unc.edu