Alumnus Aaron Poochigian '16 Winner of 2020 Richard Wilbur Award

English-language translations of The Bacchae by Euripides, by Poet and classicist Aaron Poochigian '16, produced in 2018 by SITI Company at the Getty Theater in Los Angeles and BAM in New York, and Four Plays by Aristophanes were sold in an exclusive two-book deal to Norton. Poochigian was also just named the winner of the 2020 Richard Wilbur Poetry Award for his book American Divine.

The Richard Wilbur Poetry Award is a prestigious national competition for book-length poetry collections. The author of the winning manuscript receives $1,000, and the manuscript is published by the University of Evansville Press. In recent years, such distinguished American poets as Dana Goia, Rachel Hadas, and Wyatt Prunty have served as the competition's final judge.

Poochigan specialized in poetry during his time at Columbia. He has translated four books written in Greek. His second book of poems, Manhattanite, won the 2017 Able Muse Press Award, and his first book, The Cosmic Purr, was published in 2012. He has a PhD in Classics, and was a 2010-11 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recipient.