{"693130":{"#nid":"693130","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Georgia Tech Poet Victoria Chang Named Prestigious National Book Award Finalist","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EVictoria Chang, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech, has been \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.nationalbook.org\/2026-national-book-award-finalists-announced\/\u0022\u003Enamed a finalist\u003C\/a\u003E for a National Book Award for Poetry, one of the nation\u2019s top literary prizes, for her book of poems, \u003Cem\u003ETree of Knowledge.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWith the nod, Chang becomes one of just 180 poets named finalist for the prestigious prize since its reinstatement by the National Book Foundation in 1991.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt\u0027s such an honor to have \u003Cem\u003ETree of Knowledge\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003Eselected as a finalist for the National Book Awards,\u201d Chang said. \u201cMy book \u003Cem\u003EOBIT\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003Ewas longlisted in 2020 during the pandemic, so it will be nice to celebrate in person in New York with all the other finalists.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ETree of Knowledge\u003C\/em\u003E emerged from Chang\u2019s contemplation of the felling of a tree across from her house in Los Angeles, where she was living at the time. It became, as \u003Cem\u003EMother Jones\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003Esaid, \u201ca meditation on abstract art, mortality, language, home, and history.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt spiraled out to me writing about trees in paintings that I was thinking about, and then to the expulsion of Chinese people from Eureka, California, in the 1800s,\u201d Chang said. \u201cI also included art that I made from historical photographs of Chinese people in Eureka, so the book threads the personal, the political, the historical, and the environmental.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe book features not only Chang\u2019s writing, but also her visual art. The collection incorporates original embroidered photo collages created by Chang using 19th-century archival images.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EChang holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Michigan, a master\u2019s degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard, an MBA from Stanford University and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHer previous collection of poetry, \u003Cem\u003EWith My Back to the World\u003C\/em\u003E, earned the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection, while her 2020 book \u003Cem\u003EOBIT\u003C\/em\u003E received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. OBIT was also named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe also is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to her endowed chair, Chang teaches in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/lmc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ESchool of Literature, Media, and Communication \u003C\/a\u003Eand serves as the director of \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/poetry.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EPoetry@Tech\u003C\/a\u003E, leading one of the nation\u2019s premier poetry centers and reading series. Through the work of Poetry@Tech, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Georgia Tech students across engineering, science, and the humanities learn the value of poetry as craft, literature, and personal expression.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EChang is the second Bourne Chair at Georgia Tech to be named a finalist for the prize. Her predecessor, Ilya Kaminsky, was named a finalist in 2019.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe winners will be announced Nov. 18 in New York.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EChang was nominated for her collection of poems, \u0027Tree of Knowledge.\u0027\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Chang was nominated for her collection of poems, \u0027Tree of Knowledge.\u0027"}],"uid":"34600","created_gmt":"2026-10-07 14:39:53","changed_gmt":"2026-10-07 14:43:16","author":"mpearson34","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-10-07T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-10-07T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"681374":{"id":"681374","type":"image","title":"RS3443_Victoria-Chang-by-Pat-Cray_lpr.jpg","body":"\u003Cp\u003EVictoria Chang, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Chair in Poetry in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech\u0027s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1791383999","gmt_created":"2026-10-07 14:39:59","changed":"1791383999","gmt_changed":"2026-10-07 14:39:59","alt":"\u0022\u0022","file":{"fid":"265755","name":"RS3443_Victoria-Chang-by-Pat-Cray_lpr.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/10\/07\/RS3443_Victoria-Chang-by-Pat-Cray_lpr.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/10\/07\/RS3443_Victoria-Chang-by-Pat-Cray_lpr.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":875238,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/10\/07\/RS3443_Victoria-Chang-by-Pat-Cray_lpr.jpg?itok=Hx0BOq7c"}}},"media_ids":["681374"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1283","name":"School of Literature, Media, and Communication"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EMichael Pearson\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EIvan Allen College of Liberal Arts\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}