The Poetry Foundation has awarded its annual Ruth Lilly Prize to Joy Harjo. The prize is intended to recognize a lifetime’s achievement and carries a $100,000 honorarium. The prize was established in 1986 and will be awarded to Harjo at a ceremony on June 12.

Don Share, editor of Poetry, says about Harjo, “Her work is a thrilling and necessary antidote to false news, the ephemera of digital celebrity, and other derelictions. It pushes vigorously back against forgetfulness, injustice, and negligence at every level of contemporary life. Her work moves us because it is in the continual motion of bringing forward, with grace but also acuity, our collective story, always in progress.”

Harjo is the author of thirteen books of poetry, nonfiction, and work for children. Her most recent book is Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), which was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize. Her other honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award.

You can find out more about Joy Harjo at the Poetry Foundation website.

Image Credit: Joy Harjo Official Site