Caitlin Doyle (Poetry ’08) has been selected as one of 100 doctoral students in the United States and Canada to receive the P.E.O Scholar Award! This prestigious prize recognizes Doyle’s artistic and scholarly achievements. Among the doctoral students chosen as P.E.O Scholars, Caitlin has been granted the further distinction of receiving one of the foundation’s specially endowed awards. She has been named the Presidential Endowed Scholar for 2018-2019, an honor given to a sole doctoral student in the United States and Canada every two years. According to the P.E.O Board of Trustees, this recognition is “reserved for our finest scholars.”
In a recent article in The Key Reporter about Doyle’s selection for the P.E.O Scholar Award, University of Cincinnati professor John Drury characterized Doyle as “an innovative master with elements of poetic form, such as rhyme and meter.” The article also quotes Rebecca Lindenberg, current Poetry Editor of The Cincinnati Review: “Doyle’s poetry,” Lindenberg says, “reads like Literature with a capital L.” Boston University’s own Robert Pinsky describes Doyle as “a poet of grace” and “formal ebullience” who possess a “gorgeous, original imagination.”
We were lucky enough to hear from Caitlin herself about her summer reading lists. She says:
I’ve been studying all summer for my doctoral exams and one of my areas of concentration is diasporic literature, so I’m reading a variety of novels and poetry collections that touch on themes related to diaspora, immigration, and the creation of cultural identity. Highlights thus far include Bye Bye Blackbird by Anita Desai, The Nature of Blood by Caryl Phillips, Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, Engine Empire by Cathy Park Hong, Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth, and Brooklyn by Colm Tobin. If I have time to slip in some lighter beach reading before the fall semester starts, I’d love to scope out The President is Missing, a thriller co-written by Bill Clinton and James Paterson. Anthony Lane’s hilarious review in The New Yorker made the book sound like an irresistibly fun indulgence, a perfect palate cleanser between exam study sessions.
You can read more about Caitlin as a poet and scholar in this article in The Key Reporter.
Thanks, Caitlin, and congratulations!
Caitlin Doyle is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati, where she holds an Elliston Fellowship in Poetry and serves as an Assistant Editor at The Cincinnati Review. Doyle’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared innumerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, including The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Yale Review, The Threepenny Review, Boston Review, The Black Warrior Review, and Best New Poets. Her work has also been featured through the PBS NewsHour Poetry Series and Poetry Daily. She has received awards and fellowships through the James Merrill House, the Yaddo Colony, the MacDowell Colony, and The Frost Farm, among others.
