Allison N. Seay ’02
Allison N. Seay ’02
Photo by Bill Petros
The résumé of Allison N. Seay ’02 reads like pure poetry.
She won this year’s Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry for her collection, To See the Queen, and last year’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. She’s also won an Academy of American Poets prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg award, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowships.
In recognition of her successes, Seay received the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award, reserved for a recent graduate who’s either distinguished herself in her profession or contributed significantly to Mary Washington. As UMW’s Arrington Poet-in-Residence last semester, Seay falls into both categories.
Her work has been accepted for publication in Crazyhorse, Meridian, Arts and Academe, Pleiades, Poetry, Harvard Review, Mississippi Review, The Southern Review, and Mid-American Review.
To See the Queen, also a semi-finalist for Tupelo Press’ 2011 First/Second Book Award, is to be published in April 2013.
A Richmond native, Seay majored in English at Mary Washington and earned a master of fine arts in poetry in 2005 from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as assistant director of the MFA writing program and associate editor of The Greensboro Review. She also taught poetry there and at Lynchburg College.