Poet Sonia Sanchez to receive Edwin MacDowell Medal

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The poet, activist and educator Sonia Sanchez is this year’s winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, a lifetime achievement honor started in 1960 and previously given to Robert Frost, Toni Morrison and Stephen Sondheim among others. Novelist Walter Mosley will present Sanchez her medal on July 10 on the MacDowell grounds in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the first in-person ceremony since 2019, the year before the pandemic. A prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Sanchez is known for such poetry collections as “Homegirls and Handgrenades” and “Shake Loose My Skin.”