Rigsbee Receives Oscar Arnold Young Award

David Rigsbee, professor of Language and Literature at University of Mount Olive, has been selected by the Poetry Council of NC to receive the Oscar Arnold Young Award for the best NC book of poetry published in 2010 for his collection The Red Tower: New and Selected Poems, published by New South Books.

As winner of the competition, Rigsbee will be the featured reader at Poetry Day, held on October 1 in the Peeler Crystal Lounge on the campus of Catawba College in Salisbury.  Rigsbee’s work will also be featured in the Council’s annual awards anthology, Bay Leaves, which will debut at Poetry Day.

The Red Tower was selected from 26 books (a record number of entries) by final judge, Paul Nelson, former Director of the Ohio University Creative Writing Program and award-winning author of six collections of poetry.

Such success is nothing new to Rigsbee.  He is the author of 18 collections of poetry, including The Pilot House, which won the 2009 Black River Poetry Prize, and School of the Americas, which is due out from Black Lawrence Press in 2012.  Rigsbee is a graduate of UNC, contributing editor for The Cortland Review, and recipient of fellowships and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

The Poetry Council, founded in 1949, as a self-supporting and all-volunteer nonprofit strives to foster a deeper appreciation of poetry among the people of NC by sponsoring 8 annual contests, facilitating Poetry Day, and publishing Bay Leaves.

A complete list of winners and more information on the Council and Poetry Day are available on the Council’s website at www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com