The Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism is awarded for

literary criticism Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

by the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

on behalf of the

Truman Capote Literary Trust The Truman Capote Literary Trust is an American charitable trust established in 1994 by Truman Capote's literary executor, Alan U. Schwartz, pursuant to Capote's will. Origin Capote died in 1984 and his will established a lifetime annuity for his ...

. The value of the award is $30,000 (USD), and is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language.Helen Small wins 2008 Truman Capote Award for literary criticism

news release, April 30, 2008. The formal name of the prize is the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, commemorating both Capote and his friend

Newton Arvin Fredrick Newton Arvin (August 25, 1900 – March 21, 1963) was an American literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors. After teaching at Smith College in N ...

, who was a distinguished critic and

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

professor until he lost his job in 1960 after his

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

was publicly exposed."Capote Trust Is Formed To Offer Literary Prizes"
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', March 25, 1994.

Recipients

*2022 Heather Clark - ''Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath'' *2021

Kay Ryan Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named ...

- ''Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose'' *2020

Fred Moten Fred Moten (born 1962) is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, black studies, and performance studies. Moten is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and Distinguished Professor ...

- ''Black and Blur'' *2019

Brent Hayes Edwards Brent Hayes Edwards is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Early life Edwards attended Yale as an undergraduate, then completed an MA and PhD at Columbia. Career Teaching Edwards has taught at Rutgers Unive ...

- ''Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination'' *2018

Robert Hass Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection ''Time and Materials: Poems 1997 ...

- ''A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry'' *2017 Gillian Beer - ''Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll'' *2016 Kevin Birmingham - ''The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses'' *2015

Stanley Plumly Stanley Plumly (May 23, 1939 – April 11, 2019) was an American poet and the director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program. Plumly grew up in Ohio and Virginia and was educated at Wilmington College in Ohio and at ...

- ''The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner With Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb'' *2014

Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. James ...

- ''The Antinomies of Realism'' *2013

Marina Warner Dame Marina Sarah Warner, (born 9 November 1946) is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publicatio ...

- ''Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights'' *2012

Elaine Showalter Elaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She influenced feminist literary criticism in the United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocr ...

- ''A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx'' *2011 Mark McGurl - ''The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing'' *2010

Seth Lerer Seth Lerer (born 1955) is an American scholar who specializes in historical analyses of the English language, in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is a Distinguished Professor of Liter ...

- ''Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter'' *2009

Geoffrey Hill Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be ...

- ''Collected Critical Writings'' *2008

Helen Small Helen Wenda Small (born 23 October 1964) is the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. She was previously a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Early life Small wa ...

- ''The Long Life'' *2007

William H. Gass William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...

- ''A Temple of Texts'' *2006

Geoffrey Hartman Geoffrey H. Hartman (August 11, 1929 – March 14, 2016) was a German-born American literary theorist, sometimes identified with the Yale School of deconstruction, although he cannot be categorised by a single school or method. Hartman spent most ...

and Daniel T. O'Hara - ''The Geoffrey Hartman Reader'' *2005 Angus Fletcher - ''A New Theory for American Poetry'' *2004 Susan Stewart - ''Poetry and the Fate of the Senses'' *2003

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

- ''Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001'' *2002

Declan Kiberd Declan Kiberd (born 24 May 1951) is an Irish writer and scholar with an interest in modern Irish literature, both in the English and Irish languages, which he often approaches through the lens of postcolonial theory. He is also interested in the ...

- ''Irish Classics'' *2001

Malcolm Bowie Malcolm McNaughtan Bowie FBA (; 5 May 1943 – 28 January 2007) was a British academic, and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2002 to 2006. An acclaimed scholar of French literature, Bowie wrote several books on Marcel Proust, as well a ...

- ''Proust Among the Stars'' *2000

Elaine Scarry Elaine Scarry (born June 30, 1946) is an American essayist and professor of English and American Literature and Language. She is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her interests inc ...

- ''Dreaming by the Book'' and Philip Fisher - ''Still the New World: American Literature in a Culture of Creative Destruction'' *1999

Charles Rosen Charles Welles Rosen (May 5, 1927December 9, 2012) was an American pianist and writer on music. He is remembered for his career as a concert pianist, for his recordings, and for his many writings, notable among them the book ''The Classical Sty ...

- ''Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen'' *1998 John Kerrigan - ''Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon'' *1997 John Felstiner - ''Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew'' *1996

Helen Vendler Helen Hennessy Vendler (born April 30, 1933) is an American literary critic and is Porter University Professor Emerita at Harvard University. Life and career Helen Hennessy Vendler was born on April 30, 1933, in Boston, Massachusetts, to George ...

- ''The Given and the Made: Strategies of Poetic Redefinition''

References

{{Reflist

External links

Recipients of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism
Literary criticism American literary awards Awards established in 1996 Literary awards honoring lifetime achievement 1996 establishments in Iowa