Joyce Sutphen, associate professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College, won the seventeenth annual Minnesota Book Award for poetry for her recent book Naming the Stars. Sutphen has also been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, a Loft-McKnight Award, and numerous other awards for her poetry. This is her first Minnesota Book Award.
Other nominees included 1965 Gustavus graduate Bill Holm for Playing the Black Piano, Katrina Vandenberg for Atlas: Poems, Mark Nowak for Shut Up Shut Down,and Sima Rabinowitz for The Jewish Fake Book.
“I’m very happy to have won the award, especially considering how many good books of poetry were in the running,” Sutphen says. “Now the challenge is to do something that builds on that book, that keeps me growing as a poet.”
Sutphen’s book, published by Holy Cow! Press, was released in March. WCCO-TV anchorman and reporter Don Shelby hosted the awards ceremony, held April 16 at the Women’s Club of Minneapolis. Presenters included U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton. The Minnesota Book Awards is a program of the Minnesota Humanities Commission.
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