Poets Jorie Graham and Yusef Komunyakaa and fiction writers T. C. Boyle and Richard Price will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in a ceremony next month, the Associated Press reported. The authors are among nine individuals who will be added to the 250-member society of architects, composers, artists, and writers. Members of the Academy, who can serve on committees that award more than two dozen prizes, are elected for a life term by other members.
Graham is the author of ten books of poetry. Her most recent is Sea Change (Ecco, 2008). She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994. Komunyakaa won the Pulitzer two years earlier, in 1994, for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems 1977-1989. His most recent book is Warhorses (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).
Boyle is the author of twenty books of fiction. His most recent novel, The Women (Viking, 2009), is about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright's tumultuous relationships with four women. Price, who wrote for the HBO series The Wire, has written eight novels, most recently Lush Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).
In January, poet J. D. McClatchy was elected to a three-year term as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He succeeded composer Ezra Laderman. "At a time when similar organizations are financially threatened," McClatchy said at the time, "it's crucial for the Academy—the oldest and most distinguished such group in this country—to set the standard of excellence in its unwavering devotion to the responsibilities of the human imagination."
