Peter Balakian wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry

American-Armenian writer, author Peter Balakian won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

“In poetry, for a collection of poems that bear witness to the old losses and tragedies that lie beneath a global age of danger and uncertainty, the prize goes toOzone Journalby Peter Balakian,” “Armenpress” reports, Mike Pride, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, announced.

Balakian’sOzone Journal(poems) was published by the University of Chicago Press. While excavating the remains of Armenian Genocide survivors in the Syrian desert with a TV crew, the persona navigates his own memory of New York City in a decade (the 1980’s) of crisis—as AIDS and climate change make a context for his personal struggles and his pursuit of meaning in the face of loss and catastrophe.

Balakian is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University. He is the author of seven books of poems and four prose works, includingThe Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, a New York Times best-seller, and Black Dog of Fate, a memoir and winner of the PEN/Albrand Prize.