Sunita Jain Award - Jamaica Baldwin

The Sunita Jain Literary Award for Excellence in Poetry was established in 2021 in memory of Dr. Sunita Jain, who earned her Ph.D. in English from UNL in 1972 and won multiple literary awards during her time here. She went on to become one of India's most celebrated bilingual writers, and received one of India's highest civilian honors, the Padma Shri, for her literary contributions. Dr. Jain passed away in 2017. The winner of the inaugural Sunita Jain Award was Jamaica Baldwin, who is pursuing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Nebraska Lincoln with a focus in Creative Writing (poetry), African Diasporan Literature, and Women and Gender Studies. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, the 2019 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Contest in Poetry, and a 2020 Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize Runner Up. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Guernica, The Adroit Journal, World Literature Today, The Missouri Review, and TriQuarterly, among others.