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David Bottoms

October, 2004

David Bottoms is the poet laureate of Georgia and the celebrated author of seven books of poetry and two novels. His first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was selected by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. His poems have been published widely in such magazines as The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Harper=s, and Poetry, as well as in over four dozen anthologies and textbooks. Among his many other awards are the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an Ingram Merrill Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He also edits Five Points: A Journal of Literature and Art. He lives with his wife and daughter in Atlanta, where he holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University and serves as Associate Dean for Fine Arts.

For his many contributions to the arts, poetry, and Atlanta’s literary landscape, David Bottoms exemplifies the spirit of a Lexus Leader of the Arts.