The biennial, privately funded $10,000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, first awarded to James Merrill in 1990 for "The Inner Room," is awarded to an American poet for the most distinguished book of poetry published during the preceding two years, or for lifetime achievement in poetry, or both. The prize is donated by the family of the late Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt of Austin, Tex., in her memory, and established at the Library of Congress.

Heid E. Erdrich was born in Breckenridge, Minnesota in 1963. She is the author of six poetry collections—including “Little Big Bully” (2020), winner of the 2022 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress and the 2021 Balcones Poetry Prize. She is also the author of a nonfiction Indigenous foods book as well as the editor of the poetry anthology “New Poets of Native Nations.” Her honors include a National Poetry Series award, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship, Loft-McKnight Fellowship, First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship, Minnesota State Arts Board grants and two Minnesota Book Awards. She currently teaches in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Department of Dartmouth College and is a guest curator for the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. Erdrich is Ojibwe and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

Congratulations Heid!

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