US has its frst Asan American Poet Laureate

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Arthur Sze is the United States Poet Laureate.

For the first time, the Library of Congress appointed an Asian American as the nation's 25th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2025-2026.

“What an amazing honor to be named the 25thPoet Laureate of the United States," said Arthur Sze. "As the son of Chinese immigrants, and as a sophomore who decided to leave MIT to pursue a dream of becoming a poet, I never would have guessed that so many decades later I would receive this recognition,” he said.

“It’s a recognition that belongs to teachers, librarians, editors, poets, readers – everyone who works tirelessly on behalf of poetry. As laureate I feel a great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives. We live in such a fast-paced world: poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully.”

During his term as Poet Laureate, Sze, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, plans to have a special focus on translating poetry originally written in other languages.

“Last fall the Library of Congress honored Arthur Sze with our Bobbitt Prize, for lifetime achievement in poetry; this fall we are thrilled to bring him back to the Library as the nation’s poet laureate,” said Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Randolph Newlen.

Sze joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Ada Limón, who recently completed a two-year second term, as well as Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, Charles Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.

Sze was born in New York City in 1950 to immigrant parents from China. He studied math and science at MIT in 1968. But in a 1998 interview with WHYY's Fresh Air, he said he found himself "totally bored" in a classroom and found himself writing all the time instead. So he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley to study poetry. Since then, he's written 12 poetry collections, including 2025's Into the Hush as well as the prose collection “The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems” (2025).

“His poetry is distinctly American in its focus on the landscapes of the Southwest, where he has lived for many years, as well as in its great formal innovation," said Newlen. "Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences – and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space.”

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National Book Awards go to Susan Choi and Arthur Sze

SCREEN CAPTURE / CREATIVE COMMONS

Susan Choi accepts her National Book Award Wednesday evening for her work of fiction, 'Turst Excercise.'

With more than 1,700 books under consideration, five have been chose to win National Book Awards last Nov. 20 in ceremonies held in New York City. Among the winners is "Trust Exercise" by Susan Choi for fiction and "Sight Lines" by Arthur Sze for poetry.

Winners take home a trophy, a purse of $10,000 and the right to slap that precious gold medallion on the front cover of their work.

“Receiving this award has been joyous for me. To receive such a recognition, from such a remarkable group of my peers in this business, feels amazing,” Choi wrote in a statement to The Cornell Daily Sun.

"Trust Exercise" is an exercise in trust itself as Choi takes the reader through twists. Ostenisbly it's about two high school students in a coming of age story dealing with all the travails of first love and teenage angst, but midway through, the plot thickens and becomes more than that.

The New York Times reviews it thusly: “[Trust Exercise] burns more brightly than anything [Choi’s] yet written. This psychologically acute novel enlists your heart as well as your mind. Zing will go certain taut strings in your chest. ... Choi builds her novel carefully, but it is packed with wild moments of grace and fear and abandon. ... [A] delicious and, in its way, rather delicate ... phosphorescent examination of sexual consent.”

A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Korean American author teaches fiction writing at Yale and lives in Brooklyn.

"Trust" is the author's fifth novel. Choi’s first novel, "The Foreign Student," won the Asian American Literary Award for fiction. Her second novel, "American Woman," was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film. Her third novel, "A Person of Interest," was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award.  Her fourth novel, "My Education," received a 2014 Lambda Literary Award. 

SCREEN CAPTURE / CREATIVE COMMONS

Arhur Sze receives his award for his book of poetry.

Sze is also the author of "Compass Rose" (Copper Canyon, 2014), "The Ginkgo Light "(Copper Canyon, 2009), "Quipu" (Copper Canyon, 2005), and "The Redshifting Web" (Copper Canyon, 1998). He is the recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. 

A professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Other winners of the 70th annual National Book Awards include:

• Nonfiction: Sarah M. Broom's "The Yellow House"
• Translated literature: Baron Wenckheim's "Homecoming," by László Krasznahorkai and translator Ottilie Mulzet
• Young people's literature: Martin W. Sandler's "1919: The Year That Changed America," won over  "Patron Saints of Nothing" by Filipino American author Randy Ribay.

See the full list of finalists: Jump here.

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