White Crane is proud to offer our warmest congratulations to White Crane James White Poetry Prize judge and University of Houston professor Mark Doty for his being named as the National Book Award poetry prize-winner for Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins).

Doty has taught in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program since 1999, but next spring he begins teaching at Rutgers University. Fire to Fire brings together new poems with selections from his previous seven collections, including My Alexandria (1993), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.  There is a wonderful interview with Mark here. And you can see his moving acceptance speech here.

Doty is our judge for the first James White Poetry Prize for White Crane. That winner will be announced in spring 2009.