Poet and musician Joy Harjo, known for drawing upon her Muskogee Creek heritage and the Southwest America landscape, has won a $100,000 prize for lifetime achievement.
The Academy of American Poets announced Thursday that the 64-year-old Oklahoma native received the Wallace Stevens Award for "proven mastery." The academy praised Harjo for her "visionary justice-seeking art" and for transforming "bitterness to beauty" and "trauma to healing."
Her books include "How We Became Human" and "The Woman Who Fell from the Sky."
Previous winners include W.S. Merwin and Adrienne Rich.
Also Thursday, the academy awarded Kevin Young's "Book of Hours" the $25,000 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the year's best collection and a $25,000 fellowship to poet Marie Howe.
