Tom Sleigh has been selected as the 2008 winner of the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award for Space Walk. Claremont Graduate University administers this Award, established in 1992 by Kate Tufts to honor the memory of her husband Kingsley Tufts, who held executive positions in the Los Angeles Shipyards and wrote poetry as his avocation.

Tom Sleigh is the author of seven books of poetry, After One (winner of the Houghton Mifflin New Poetry Series Prize, l983),Waking (University of Chicago Press Phoenix Poets Series, l990), which was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the Notable Books of 1990-91 and was a finalist for the Lamont Poetry Prize, and The Chain, also published by the University of Chicago Press in March, l996. The Chain was nominated for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets and the Nation Magazine. His fourth book, The Dreamhouse, (Chicago, November 1999) was a selection of the Academy of American Poet’s Poetry Book Club and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His fifth book, Far Side of the Earth, was published by Houghton Mifflin (April 3, 2003), and named an Honor Book by the Massachusetts Society for the Book. His sixth book, Bula Matari/Smasher of Rocks was published in a limited edition by Arrowsmith. And his new book, Space Walk, was published by Houghton Mifflin (March, 2007). He has also published a book of essays, Interview With a Ghost (Graywolf Press, 2006) and a translation of Euripides’ Herakles (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Judges for this award were: Robert Wrigley, Allison Joseph, Robert Pinsky, Alice Quinn, and Charles Harper Webb.