Jaffe Awards announced

The Rona Jaffe Foundation, which grants awards to female writers of exceptional talent, just announced which poets will receive prizes: Sara Elizabeth Johnson and Poetry magazine contributor Laura Newbern. Johnson has published in a variety of literary magazines, and the judges describe her manuscript as follows:

Deriving much inspiration from ancient and medieval nautical, cartographic, and navigational technologies, my current book-length manuscript, Vessel, arises from a ‘lovesickness’ in that it examines the wide and almost palpable distance that lies between one body and another, and the desire to cross that distance—that sea—into the lover’s body.

It's sure to make a splash.

Another winner is non-poet Rachel Aviv, a journalist who explores "such diverse subjects as Braille literacy among the blind, present-day Christian missionaries who convert children, and the neuroscience of dreams." Most importantly, she has left her mark on the Poetry Foundation website with an excellent piece about the "Footprints" poem, as well as several other articles.