The Malayali poet Nithya Mariam John has been nominated for 2022’s Pushcart Prize appreciating distinguished poetry
Nithya Mariam John, a Malayali poet, and translator have been nominated for the revered American Literary Award Pushcart Prize. The editors of Last Leaves Magazine, run by editors Cailey Johanna Thiessen, Kiera S. Baron, and Maina Chen who published her poem ‘Seven Nights of Mourning,’ nominated her for the award this year.
Nithya Mariam John is an Assistant Professor who teaches in the English department of BCM College for Women, Kottayam, and has three short poetry collections to her credit. Gulmohar Quarterly, Malayalam Literature Survey, The Alipore Post, Borderless, Sanglap, DoubleSpeak, Last Leaves, Ink-Kochi, Usawa Literary Review, Hyderabad Literature Festival-Khabar, Muse India, The Samyuktha Poetry, Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, Muddy River Review, and Qissa have published her work.
Nithya Mariam John has also had her poems have been translated and published in Odiya and some have also been translated into Malayalam and Tamil. She has translated works by Unni R, Shahina E K, Anju Sajith, and Gracy into English.
The greatest poetry, short fiction, essays, or literary works produced in small presses over the preceding year is honored with the Pushcart Prize, an American literary award given out by Pushcart Press. Editors of magazines and independent book presses are welcome to submit up to six works they have highlighted. Since 1976, yearly anthologies of the chosen pieces have been released. It is funded and largely run by volunteers.
Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler, Nona Balakian, Paul Bowles, Paul Engle, Ralph Ellison, Reynolds Price, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern, Gordon Lish, Ishmael Reed, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, Bill Henderson, and William Phillips were among the founding editors.
Over the years, this collection has been maintained by several guest editors. Each edition that they edited contains a list of them. Each edition receives nominations from more than 200 contributing editors, as listed on the masthead.
The goal of the award is to highlight the top work published by small, independent publications each year. Editors can suggest up to six pieces from any genre that appeared on their pages that year, and a panel of editors and former Pushcart Prize winners will choose the winners after that. More than 2,000 authors and 600 publishing houses have received the award since it was established; previous recipients include Kwame Dawes, Mona Simpson, Rick Bass, Toi Derricotte, Steven Barthelme, Raymond Carver, and Kathy Acker. The Pushcart Prize is without a doubt highly regarded among authors and editors; moreover, it may offer notoriety not only to the winning writers but also to the small presses that published the winners.
The following authors were among those who received early acclaim in Pushcart Prize anthologies: Steven Barthelme, Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Bruce Boston, Anne Carson, Raymond Carver, Joshua Clover, Junot Diaz, Andre Dubus, William H. Gass, Suzanne Kamata, Seán Mac Falls, William Monahan, Paul Muldoon, Tim O’Brien, Lance Olsen, Miha Mazzini, Peter Orner, Kevin Prufer, Kathy Acker, Kay Ryan, Mona Simpson, Ana Menéndez, Ladette Randolph, Kaveh Akbar, and Wells Tower.
The prize doled out by the Pushcart Press was founded in 1972 by Bill Henderson (a former associate editor at Doubleday), and is perhaps best known for its Pushcart Prize and the anthology of prize winners it publishes each year. Publishers Weekly named the press one of the “most influential publishers” in the United States, awarding it the Carey Thomas Prize for the publisher of the year in 1979. It also received the National Book Critics Circle’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and the Poets & Writers/Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Prize in 2006.
Other major international poetry awards like the pushcart prize include:
- Charles Causley Trust International Poetry Competition
- Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
- Rhysling Award
- Montreal International Poetry Prize
- National Poetry Competition
- Poetic Republic Poetry Prize
- Griffin Poetry Prize
- International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine
- Poetry London Prize
- Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings
- Bridges of Struga
- Nobel Prize in Literature
