James Tate elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters
English professor James Tate has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the names of nine new artists, writers, and composers elected to membership. Among the nine is University of Massachusetts Amherst English professor and poet James V. Tate, who will be inducted at the Academy’s annual Ceremonial in May. The honor of election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters is considered the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in this country.
The Academy was founded in 1898 to “foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts.” In addition to the elected membership of 250, the Academy annually honors artists, architects, writers, and composers who are not members with cash awards, and sponsors exhibitions of painting, sculpture, architecture, and manuscripts. The Academy publishes material on its history and, through the Richard Rogers Award, offers readings and performances of new musicals. The American Academy of Arts and Letters is located in two landmark buildings, designed by McKim, Mead & White and by Cass Gilbert, on Audubon Terrace at 155th Street and Broadway in New York City.
James Tate has been a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 1971. He was born in 1943 in Kansas City, Missouri, and attended the University of Missouri, Kansas State College, and the University of Iowa. He has taught creative writing at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. Professor Tate has written more than twenty-five books of poetry including
Cages; The Lost Pilot; Camping in the Valley; Row with Your Hair; Shepherds of the Mist; Deaf Girl Playing; Wrong Songs; Absences; Land of Little Sticks; Reckoner; Worshipful Company of Fletchers;
The Route as Briefed; and Memoir of the Hawk: Poems. His collectionSelected Poems
(1991) won a Pulitzer Prize. Professor Tate has written a novel,Lucky Darryl
, and a collection of short stories,Hottentot Ossuary.
Lee Edwards, Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts says, “This is a tremendous honor for Jim Tate, and completely deserved. We’re very proud to have him as a member of our distinguished MFA Program in Creative Writing in the English Department, and as a member of the College.”
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has had one previous faculty member elected to the Academy; James Baldwin, the late writer and Professor of African American Studies was elected in 1964.