AWP George Garrett Award image.

George Garrett Award

Contemporary literature and AWP have benefited from the efforts of many teachers, writers, editors, and administrators who have done their utmost to help the next generation of writers find their way as artists and as literary professionals. In bestowing the annual George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature, AWP recognizes a few of those individuals who have made notable donations of care, time, labor, and money to support writers and their literary accomplishments. Letters of nomination are accepted September 1–October 31 annually via our online submission portal.

The award is named for George Garrett (1929–2008), who made exceptional contributions to his fellow writers as a teacher, mentor, editor, friend, board member, and good spirit. Garrett served for many years as the editor of Intro, an annual anthology of work by emerging writers; he served as one of the founding members of the AWP Board of Directors; he taught creative writing and literature for more than forty years; and he authored more than thirty books. As a writer, teacher, mentor, editor, or inspiration, Garrett helped many young writers who are now major contributors to contemporary letters. The award includes a $2,000 honorarium, in addition to travel, accommodations, and registration to attend AWP's annual conference, where the award is publicly announced and conferred.

2026 George Garrett Award Winner

Headshot of Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win’s latest full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024), which was recently shortlisted for the 2025 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her previous full-length collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020), was longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry, and nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, California, and the recipient of the 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2025 Nomadic/SF Foundation Literary Award for Non-fiction. Win’s previous collections include Invisible Gifts (Manic D Press) and two chapbooks, Score and Bone (Black Lawrence Press/Nomadic Press) and Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects). Win often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers, and her Process Note Series features poets on their process. She teaches poetry in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco, Saint Mary’s College of California, and the low-residency MFA program at Dominican University. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a cofounder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a literary community. Learn more at MawSheinWin.com.



The award will be given to a living individual who has demonstrated exceptional generosity and service to writers by excellent work in one or more of the following activities:

  • Teaching creative writing and literature
  • Serving as a mentor, supporter, or guide to writers
  • Publishing or editing literature, especially works by emerging talents
  • Building new resources that benefit writers (reading series, presses, awards, endowments, fellowships, stipends, programs, community centers, foundations, etc.)
  • Administering to programs or institutions that benefit writers or that expand audiences for contemporary authors
  • Working generally to make North America a more supportive place for contemporary literature and its makers

To receive the award, the recipient must be willing to travel to the annual AWP Conference & Bookfair.

Any living individual who meets the above criteria may be nominated for the award except for the following: members of the current AWP Board of Directors or AWP staff; family members of the AWP Board of Directors or AWP staff; and former AWP board members or AWP staff who served AWP within the last four years.

A former board member or staff member of AWP may be nominated for the award only after at least four years have lapsed between the deadline for nominations and his or her last official day of service to AWP. Previous recipients of the award may not be nominated or considered. Self-nominations will not be considered.

Anyone, nonmember or member of AWP, may submit a confidential letter of nomination. Nomination letters should feature the following:

  • An explanation of how your nominee fulfills the criteria cataloged above.
  • Specificity. Please note where the nominee did good works, length of service, names of writers helped, or detailed descriptions of what your nominee did or built in support of writers.
  • Brevity. Your letter of nomination should be no longer than two pages, single-spaced.
  • Attribution. Your name, return address, and signature must appear on your letter.

The Award Committee reviews over 100 letters each year. Please prepare your letter with care.

Letters of nomination should be submitted through AWP’s online submission portal. All nomination letters will only be shared with the review committee, and should be addressed to: Executive Director, Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Letters of nomination will remain in active consideration for three years—that is, for three cycles of the process of adjudication. If you submit your letter in 2024, for instance, your letter of nomination will remain active until the end of the 2027 cycle of deliberations. Nomination letters will be shared only with the review committee.


Previous Winners

Kathryn Kysar holding George Garrett Award and smiling in front of AWP25 backdrop

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited the creative nonfiction anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. he has received fellowships and residencies from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Tofte Lake Center, the Oberholtzer Foundation, and Write On, Door County. Her poems, book reviews, travel articles, and essays have been published in About Place Journal, The Fourth River, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Literary Mama, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Mizna, Mollyhouse, Sequestrum, Slag Glass City, Stone Coast Review, Voice Mail Poems, and many other magazines and anthologies. She has a BA in English from Hamline University and an MFA in poetry from Wichita State University. She is the founder of the creative writing program at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and she has served on the boards of directors for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and Rain Taxi. In addition to her work at ARCC, Kysar teaches at the Loft Literary Center and performs with the Sonoglyph Collective, a poetry/improvisational jazz group. She lives in Saint Paul near the Mississippi River.

Year Winner

2024

 Jerod Santek

2023

 Duriel E. Harris

2022

 Craig Santos Perez

2021

 Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

2020

 Margaret Randall

2019

 Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez

2018

 Erin Belieu

2017

 John Balaban

2016

 E. Ethelbert Miller

2015

 Bob Shacochis

2014

 Maria Mazziotti Gillan

2013

 Grace Cavalieri

2012

 Allison Joseph

2011

 Aksold Melnyczuk

2010

 Jonis Agee

2009

 Richard Jackson

2008

 Doris Betts

2007

 R. H. W. Dillard

2006

 Ed Ochester

2005

 Ron Wallace