Andrea Brady, poet and Professor of Poetry at Queen Mary University of London, has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin.
Brady will be honored for her second book of criticism, a wide-ranging survey of lyric poetry, titled Poetry and Bondage: A History and Theory of Lyric Constraint, published in 2021 by Cambridge University Press. Spanning the poetic tradition from ancient Rome to contemporary America, the book examines the ways that lyric poetry, often oriented toward formal constraint, has tended to obscure the material constraints of the enslaved and imprisoned people of those historical moments. Brady’s work also looks at examples of contemporary poets who have approached the lyric form in new ways.
An awards ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber. The event will feature remarks by Brady and a reception in the Old Capitol Rotunda. The ceremony and reception are open to the public.
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