Marilyn Nelson was named the 2012 recipient of the Poetry Society of America's highest honor, the Robert Frost Medal, presented annually for "distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry." Previous winners have included Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Moore and last year's honoree, Charles Simic.
Nelson is is the author or translator of 14 books, including The Homeplace and The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems, both of which were finalists for the National Book Award. Among her many children's books is Carver: A Life in Poems, which received the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award. It was also a National Book Award finalist, a Newbery Honor Book and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book.
