Guwahati, Aug 3 Abhijit Sarmah, an Assamese poet, has made the final list for the prestigious Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships in the US.
Five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships are given out each year by the Poetry Foundation.
The $27,000 prize, which is arguably the biggest reward given to young poets in the US, is meant to promote outstanding US poets between the age of 21 and 31 years.
Abhijit, a resident of Dibrugarh, is currently enrolled in the University of Georgia's Creative Writing Programme as a second-year PhD student.
"The Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship is arguably the biggest award granted to poets located in the US, including myself. I feel blessed to be shortlisted for this," Abhijit said.
The list of the 12 finalists that was released on Wednesday, Abhijit is the only Indian.
There has never been another person from the Northeast India featured there.
In addition to receiving a grant, the five beneficiaries of fellowships, who will be announced in late August, will also be given the opportunity to publish in the Poetry magazine. Each of the 12 finalists will be given money to use towards their choice of professional development opportunities.
Abhijit is a poet and scholar of indigenous literatures, with an emphasis on Northeast Indian and native American women writers. He completed his M.Phil degree from the Dibrugarh University.
He graduated in English literature from the Jagannath Barooah College in Jorhat and did his masters in the Dibrugarh University.
--IANS
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