Oliver Baez Bendorf. Photo: Cate Barry.
The Publishing Triangle is thrilled to announce that Oliver Baez Bendorf is the winner of the its fourth annual Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award. This prize, named in honor of the L.A.-based psychologist, author, and activist Betty Berzon (1928–2006), is presented to a promising LGBTQ writer who has published at least one book but not more than two.
Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of two collections, Advantages of Being Evergreen (2019), and The Spectral Wilderness (2015), the latter of which was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His poems can be found in recent and forthcoming issues of American Poetry Review, Poetry, BOMB, and New England Review, and they have been anthologized in Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics.
Born and raised in Iowa, Oliver is currently an assistant professor of poetry at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. He is a fellow of the CantoMundo Poetry Workshop and a recipient of the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize. His work on #PulseOrlandoSyllabus was covered by Chronicle of Higher Education, Elle, and WLRN Miami. The judges for the Berzon Prize said, “Oliver Baez Bendorf’s work is intense, unique, and evocative, and it amplifies the voices of marginalized groups without being deprecating or apologetic.”
Bendorf will receive a prize of $1500 with this award. The prize will be presented at the 32nd annual Triangle Awards, held at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium (63 Fifth Avenue, New York City) on April 30, 2020, starting at 7 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public.