April 25, 2008 — Charles Wright, the Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia, will receive the 2008 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. He will share the award with Bob Hicok, an assistant professor of English at Virginia Tech. Both will read selections of their work at the award program April 28 in Washington.

Wright, 73, is being honored for lifetime achievement. Hicok won for his book, "This Clumsy Living."

The biennial award, which carries a $10,000 prize, is financed by the family of the late Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt, sister of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Wright won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "Black Zodiac." He also has won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. His most recent books include "Littlefoot: A Poem" and "Scar Tissue," which was the international winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Hicok has written five books of poetry, including "The Legend of Light," which was an American Library Association Booklist Notable Book of 1995 and won the 1995 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry.

The program, which will take place at the James Madison Building at the Library of Congress, is free and open to the public.