Ohioana James P. Barry Award for Editorial Excellence: 2008
David Young and David Walker
Oberlin OH
Editors, FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
 In 1969, David Young, along with four Oberlin colleagues, helped found
FIELD, a twice-yearly journal devoted to contemporary poetry and poetics that would combine fresh viewpoints, editorial discrimination, and
an attention to the best work being produced in the United States and abroad, regardless of allegiance to
schools or categories or reputations.
FIELD provides a forum where poets, eminent and emerging, show each other and those who
follow the course of the art what is innovative and most interesting.
David Young has published ten books of poetry since 1968, when his first collection,
Sweating Out the Winter, won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum. His newest collection, published in February 2006,
is Black Lab (Knopf).
Young is also a translator with skill and experience in five languages, and in 1978 FIELD magazine spawned the FIELD
Translation Series to address the void of good English-language translations of the world’s most important contemporary poets
Alice Joyce of Booklist called Young’s book Seasoning: A Poet’s Year: With Seasonal Recipes
(Ohio State University Press, 1997) “Skillful and astute, Young is a wordsmith who brings his own particularly satisfying sense of place—call it a ‘bioregional’
awareness of his Ohio surroundings—to this creative melding of culinary segments and lyrical observations on the changing seasons.”
David Young has earned many awards including being designated as a National Endowment for the Humanities Junior Fellow award, 1967-68, and the Ohioana Poetry Award in 1988.
 David Walker has co-edited FIELD: Contemporary
Poetry and Poetics and the other publications of Oberlin College Press since 1977. With David Young, he has
primary responsibility for all aspects of FIELD, the FIELD Poetry Series, the FIELD Translation Series,
FIELD Editions, and the annual FIELD Poetry Prize for book-length manuscripts.
In addition to editing for the Press, Walker is the author, editor, or co-translator of five books, most recently
American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets; Poets Reading: The FIELD Symposia, and A FIELD Guide to Contemporary Poetry, as well as many articles and reviews.
Walker earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1972, and received his Ph.D. in 1979 from Cornell University. He is a professor of
English at Oberlin, where he teaches modern literature and creative writing.
Website of FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
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