June 20, 2014 Charles Wright, the newly appointed U.S Poet Laureate, has won the National Book Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Prize, the American Book Award in Poetry, The Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. He was born in Pickwick Dam, Tennessee, and grew up in Oak Ridge and Kingsport.
