2025 Paul Engle Prize Ceremony Honoring Cole Swensen
November 16 @ 2:00 pm
Cole Swensen has been named the 14th recipient of the Paul Engle Prize, presented by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization.
The prize, established in 2011, honors an individual who, like Paul Engle, represents a pioneering spirit in the world of literature through writing, editing, publishing, or teaching, and whose active participation in the larger issues of the day has contributed to the betterment of the world through the literary arts.
Swensen is a poet, editor, and translator, who taught in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 2001 to 2012. She then taught at Brown University until her retirement in 2023.
She is the author of 20 collections of poetry, including And And And, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Art in Time, Gravesend, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry; Goest, a finalist for the National Book Award; Try, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award; and New Math, winner of the National Poetry Series.
Swensen has translated more than 30 books of French poetry, creative nonfiction, and art criticism, and won the 2024 National Translation Award from ALTA and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Translation Prize. She was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a writer-in-residence at Yale’s Beinecke Library, the Pratt Institute, and Temple University. Swensen was the founder and editor of La Presse, an imprint of Fence Books that was dedicated to the translation of contemporary French poetry.
Swensen will receive the award at a ceremony at 2 p.m. on November 16, at the Coralville Public Library. Christopher Merrill will join Swensen in conversation. The event is free and open to the public. Book signing and reception to follow.
The Paul Engle Prize is made possible through the generous support of the City of Coralville, which is home to 11 permanent sculptures with artistic and literary ties to Iowa. The sculptures all have ties to work found in The Iowa Writers’ Library, housed in the Hyatt Regency Coralville Hotel, which features about 800 books written by former students, graduates and faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Paul Engle (October 12, 1908 – March 22, 1991), though best remembered as the long-time director of the Writers’ Workshop and co-founder with his wife, Hualing Nieh Engle, of the UI’s International Writing Program, also was a well-regarded poet, playwright, essayist, editor and critic. In 2000, then-Gov. Tom Vilsack declared Engle’s birthday, Oct. 12, as “Paul Engle Day” in Iowa.
Previous winners of the prize are: James Alan McPherson, Kwame Dawes, Luis Alberto Urrea, Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, Dina Nayeri, Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady, Dr. Eve L. Ewing, Rebecca Solnit, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and Camille Dungy. Visit www.iowacityofliterature.org/paul-engle-day for more information about the prize and past winners.
