For the winter quarter of 2021, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Alabama institutions and artists $270,000, supporting the best and brightest creators in the state. NewSouth Books is proud to announce that Jacqueline Trimble, author of American Happiness, received twenty-five thousand of those dollars in support of the furtherance of her work as a poet. Chosen alongside the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and the city of Tuscaloosa, Trimble’s achievement as an individual is a remarkable one indeed. As she told Alabama State University, where she serves as a professor of English and chair of the Department of Languages and Literature, “The National Endowment for the Arts only bestows this award to poets every other year, which makes it very special and most important to me. While the monetary award is fantastic, the most important thing to me is the level of recognition and encouragement this fellowship gives me as a writer by having a jury of my peers choose my manuscript out of a total of 1,601 in a blind competition. This makes me feel that my long hours of writing poetry are worthwhile … Being named an NEA Fellow is personally awe-inspiring to me.”

Jacqueline Trimble has been a poet and educator for much of her life, working tirelessly to create and share the beauty and art of poetry with students and readers alike. Dr. Jennifer Fremlin, chair of Huntingdon College’s Department of Language and Literature, had this to say about her: “Those lucky enough to have been students or colleagues of Dr. Jackie Trimble know that she is first and foremost a teacher, and her poetry is an extension of that drive to help us all learn to see the world as it is: unvarnished and truthful and painful and beautiful all at the same time.” This NEA fellowship enables Trimble to continue writing full-time without distraction, a gift to us as readers.

American Happiness, her award-winning debut poetry collection, was published by NewSouth in 2016. Alabama Writers Hall of Famer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers wrote this about the collection: “I longed for her kind of poetry, these cut-to-the-flesh poems, this verse that sings the old-time religion of difficult truths with new courage and utter sister-beauty.” To use the language of the pandemic, Trimble’s work is essential, and we should be grateful that she has received this NEA grant that will keep her writing in 2021 and beyond.

More about Trimble’s work and the award can be found from Huntingdon College and Alabama State University.