News Briefs

The Library awarded the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to National Book Award winner Arthur Sze for lifetime achievement in poetry.

Sze is the author of 11 poetry collections, most recently “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems” (2021). Other collections include “Sight Lines” (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; “Compass Rose” (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; “The Ginkgo Light” (2009); and “Archipelago” (1995). Sze also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, “The Silk Dragon II” (2024).

The biennial Bobbitt Prize, which carries a $10,000 award, recognizes a book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years or the lifetime achievement of an American poet. The prize is made possible by the family of Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt of Austin, Texas, in her memory, and awarded at the Library.

The Library’s Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office recently awarded Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) grants to 23 first-time and 19 continuing grantee organizations located in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The current grants, awarded in September, provide one year of funding with the possibility of two additional one-year grants, contingent upon delivery of TPS educational projects based on Library of Congress digitized materials.

New grantees will use primary sources to deliver educational projects focused on civics, economics, disability history, law, writing, local and place-based history, media literacy, data visualization, state archives holdings and congressional centers activities and on supporting student inquiry.

Since 2006, Congress has appropriated funds to TPS to establish and fund a consortium of organizations working to incorporate “the digital collections of the Library of Congress into educational curricula.”

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden recently appointed Kimberly Figel Benoit inspector general for the Library of Congress.

Formerly the assistant inspector general for audits of NASA, Benoit’s more than 20-year career comprises a broad professional portfolio spanning both the public and private sectors. Benoit has extensive federal audit and investigative experience in both the executive and legislative branches.

As head of the Library’s Office of the Inspector General, Benoit will provide oversight for all Library programs and operations, including audits, investigations and other reviews and semiannual reports to the Congress.

Benoit holds a master’s degree in business administration from Ohio University and a Bachelor of Arts in accounting, with a leadership studies minor, from Marietta College. She is a Virginia-licensed certified public accountant and a certified fraud examiner.

The Library will host Jessica Fries-Gaither and Ralph Pantozzi as Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows for the 2024–25 school year.

They will work closely with the Library’s Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office and Informal Learning Office to make primary sources from the Library’s collections more accessible and useful for educators in science, technology, engineering and math across the country.

Fries-Gaither has taught science and worked in education for 25 years, the last 12 teaching elementary science at the Columbus School for Girls in Columbus, Ohio. She has served as the school’s Science Department chair for the last four years.

Pantozzi, a high school math teacher from Millington, New Jersey, has more than three decades of experience as a mathematics teacher, supervisor of instruction and teacher educator. In 2017, he was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.