Prof. Ann Townsend a finalist of Ohioana 2020 Book Awards

English Professor Ann Townsend’s book of poetry, “Dear Delinquent,” ihas been named a finalist for the Ohioana 2020 Book Awards.

Townsend’s book is one only 30 finalists in six categories chosen from more than 400 entrants.

“Ann Townsend has borrowed her title, Dear Delinquent, from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s method of addressing her lover, Salomón de la Selva. The lyric eroticism in this book, however, is Townsend’s alone, a volume of allowed and disallowed passions, a painfully precise investigation of love, probed, categorized, and dissected by Townsend’s disciplined, sharply delicate lyric stylus.” —Laverne Frith, New York Journal of Books

Townsend is the author of “Dime Store Erotics” and “The Coronary Garden.” She is the editor (with fellow Denison Professor David Baker) of a collection of essays, “Radiant Lyre: on Lyric Poetry.” Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, and many others.

She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council, the Lannan Foundation, and more. She is the co-founder of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. In 2016 she, and co-founders Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu, accepted the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.

A Professor of English and Creative Writing and Director of the Writing Program at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, Townsend hybridizes modern daylilies at Bittersweet Farm.