For her collection To See the Queen, Allison Seay ’02 has received a royal honor. The 2012 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry ensures publication of Seay’s manuscript and comes with a stay in a 15th-century castle in the Italian countryside.
Seay, who is teaching advanced poetry and creative writing at UMW this semester, is serving as Arrington Poet-in-Residence while Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry Claudia Emerson is on sabbatical.
A writer and editor, Seay has taught at Greensboro and Lynchburg colleges and at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she earned a master of fine arts degree. She is the winner of last year’s prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and her work has been featured in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Poetry.
The Lexi Rudnitsky award was named for a 32-year-old graduate student whose first poetic manuscript had been accepted for publication when she died of cardiac arrest. It is presented annually to a young woman poet who has yet to release her first full-length book.
The honor affords Seay a paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center, housed in a castle in Perugia, Italy, and a $1,000 advance toward Persea Books’ publication of To See the Queen, due out April 2013.