Philip Brady, a professor in YSU’s English Department, was honored this past fall by the Ohioana Library Association with the 2008 “Ohioana Helen & Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award.”

An internationally renowned poet and writer, Brady has published three books of poetry and two books of celebrated personal essays; he has also co-authored a scholarly edition on James Joyce. His poetry has appeared in more than 50 national and international literary journals. Brady founded the YSU Poetry Center in 1994 and was the founding director of the NEOMFA (Northeastern Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing), a unique collaboration among YSU, Kent State University, the University of Akron and Cleveland State University. He also serves as an adviser to YSU’s literary journal, The Penguin Review, and is founder and director of Etruscan Press, a national literary publishing house.

No stranger to awards and international recognition, Brady has earned five Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships, a Newhouse Award and a Thayer Fellowship in the Arts from New York State, the Snyder Prize for his book, Weal, and residencies at Yaddo, the Soros Centre in Prague, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and the Headlands Center in California.

In accepting the prestigious award, Brady said:

“A few years ago, I was walking in downtown Youngstown, and I came upon a derelict building. There was a broken window, covered by a cardboard sheet to keep out the wind, and on it was stenciled - beautifully stenciled - these words.

‘When you love a place, truly and most hopelessly love it, I think you love it for its signs of disaster, the way you come to realize that you love the irregularities, and even scars, on some person's face.’

The words were signed, "James Wright, Ohio poet." Well, James Wright was one of the greatest poets in the English language since Yeats, but I think he would have been proud to see his words here, so close to the source of their making, keeping out the wind. And I think he would have been very proud - for all his international acclaim - to be called an Ohio poet. I do not claim James Wright's stature. But I'm very proud today to be called an Ohio poet.”