By April Mulherin (Winter 2008 Issue)

Jeffrey Thomson, assistant professor of creative writing, has been named a 2008 Literary Arts Fellow by the Maine Arts Commission. His award is one of the three Individual Artist Fellowships given annually by the commission in recognition of the literary, visual and performing arts.

Thomson’s selection from among 70 applicants was based on his chapbook Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, released in 2007 by RopeWalk Press. The Literary Arts Fellowship review panel of Major Jackson, Mimi White and Jim Kelly described Thomson’s poetry as “thinking that becomes sensuous.” Thomson’s recent honors and awards include the 2006 Individual Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers Conference in 2005.