2007 grantee Rae Armantrout is a poet based in San Diego, California; she received her FCA grant at age 60. Like many poets, Armantrout has a full-time job as a university professor and the grant helped her take time away from the demands of teaching. The unfettered creative time that the FCA grant allowed resulted in a new manuscript of poems called Dark Matter. The grant also enabled Armantrout to travel to Italy for the first time, which had a profound impact on her writing.
A year after receiving the FCA grant, Armantrout was recognized as a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. In 2009, her book of poetry, Versed, was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Versed is one of Armantrout’s three books including Next Life (2007) and Money Shot (2011) all published by Wesleyan University Press. Many of Armantrout’s poems have been included in anthologies such as Best American Poetry of 2007 and Poems of the Women’s Movement. In 2010, Versed won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
