Congratulations to National Book Award Winner Don Mee Choi

We have been very excitedly following news of this year's National Book Award nominations — particularly PennSound poets Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Don Mee Choi as they made it from the longlist to the group of five finalists. In ceremonies held earlier this evening it was announced that Choi's DMZ Colony had been selected by judges Layli Long Soldier, Rigoberto González, John Hennessy, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Elizabeth Willis as this year's winner.

In their citation, the judges hailed DMZ Colony as an "urgent" text that "captures the migratory latticework of those transformed by war and colonization." "Homelands present and past share one sky where birds fly," they continue, "but 'during the Korean War cranes had no place to land.'" They conclude: "Devastating and vigilant, this bricolage of survivor accounts, drawings, photographs, and hand-written texts unearth the truth between fact and the critical imagination. We are all 'victims of History,' so Choi compels us to witness, and to resist."

While we don't have a PennSound author page for Don Mee Choi, you can also hear her reading her work as part of Poetry Politic and as part of the 2012 MLA Offsite Reading. We congratulate Choi and Wave Books for this well-deserved honor.