Tampa Review Prize Poet Benjamin Grossberg Wins National Lambda Literary Award for Poetry

Poet Benjamin S. Grossberg and the University of Tampa Press were honored last month with a national Lambda Literary Award.

Grossberg, who received the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for Sweet Core Orchard, published last year by the University of Tampa Press, had his book selected as winner of the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. He was on hand to accept the honor at the 22nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony, May 27, 2010, at the School of Visual Arts Theater in New York City. The awards have been sponsored annually for over two decades by the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Sweet Core Orchard was chosen from an impressive list of finalists, including Breakfast with Thom Gunn by Randall Mann (University of Chicago Press); The Brother Swimming Beneath Me by Brent Goodman (Black Lawrence Press); The First Risk by Charles Jensen (Lethe Press); and What the Right Hand Knows by Tom Healy (Four Way Books).

Grossberg currently teaches at the University of Hartford. His poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Paris Review, Southwest Review, American Literary Review, North American Review, and many others. His first book, Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath, won the 2005 Snyder Prize and was published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2007. His previous awards include a Pushcart Prize as well as several literary arts grants. Two poems from his Tampa Review Prize book were recently selected for publication on the Poetry Foundation website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive.

Sweet Core Orchard, winner of the 2008 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry and the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry, can be ordered from the publisher at http://utpress.ut.edu



Ben Grossberg at the podium in New York City accepting the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. Photo © Donna F. Aceto.