Creative writing associate professor’s book earns national honor
“The New Economy,” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, is a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
One Carolina faculty member’s newest book is earning national accolades.
“The New Economy,” written by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, has been named a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Calvocoressi is an associate professor in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ English and comparative literature department, where’s she’s part of the creative writing program.
The shortlist for the National Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people’s literature was announced Oct. 7. The five finalists in each category were selected by a distinguished panel of judges and advanced from the long list announced in September.
Told through the point of view of an ungendered body as it ages, “The New Economy” explores childhood memories, great loss and the desire to accept and protect one’s own body as is, while simultaneously yearning to have been born in another.
“I’m just so excited and moved by this whole process,” Calvocoressi said. “It’s like I often tell my students: Poetry is a practice, and life in art is a practice. This is something I’ve worked on for so long, and also it feels brand new as it makes its way in the world.”
The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced Nov. 19 at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony in New York. Publishers submitted a total of 1,835 books for this year’s awards: 434 in fiction, 652 in nonfiction, 285 in poetry, 139 in translated literature and 325 in young people’s literature.
In addition to “The New Economy,” Calvocoressi has written three other acclaimed poetry collections: “Rocket Fantastic,” “Apocalyptic Swing” and “The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart.”
“What Gaby has achieved through receiving this kind of recognition is rare and lasting,” said Daniel Wallace, the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English and director of the creative writing program. “It means she is among the best and most important poets at work in America today. We at UNC have always known that, of course; now everybody else does. We are all so happy.”
Calvocoressi’s work is currently featured on the cover of The American Poetry Review. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals, including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an editor at large at Los Angeles Review of Books and poetry editor at Southern Cultures.
“The New Economy” was published in October 2025 by Copper Canyon Press.
