Presidential inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander among 3 new Chancellors named to poets academy

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Elizabeth Alexander, a Pulitzer Prize finalist who recited a poem at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration has been elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

The academy announced Thursday that National Book Award finalist Linda Gregerson and award-winning poet-critic Alicia Suskin Ostriker were also chosen. Chancellors, whose duties range from judging prizes to consulting on programming, are voted on by the current board and serve six-year terms. Previous Chancellors include W.H. Auden, Adrienne Rich and John Ashbery.

The academy is a non-profit organization founded in 1934. It runs the Poets.org website, organizes events for National Poetry Month in April and administers such prizes as the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement.

Earlier this week, Alexander was named the first Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.