Author and Poet Richie Hofmann to receive 2026 Corrington Award on Oct. 26
Centenary College of Louisiana is proud to announce that poet Richie Hofmann will receive the 2026 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence. The College’s English Department will present the award Monday, Oct. 26, in Centenary’s Marjorie Lyons Playhouse.
The ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Hofmann will give a reading and answer questions from the audience followed by a reception and book signing in the Anderson Choral Building. The ceremony will also feature creative performances by current Centenary students and alumni.
Hofmann received a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2025 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Poetry and The Yale Review, and his honors include the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
His most recent book is The Bronze Arms (2026), a queer coming-of-age collection of poems stemming from a single memory of Hofmann’s regarding a near drowning on the island of Crete. This mesh of classical myth and memory is a fitting follow up to A Hundred Lovers (2022), a book as much about the tradition of love poetry as it is about love itself. His debut collection, Second Empire (2015) is populated with statues, symphonies, and literary echoes from Sappho to the present.
“Hofmann’s poetry reminds us that literature is a living conversation with art and history, with other writers, and with one another,” said Dr. Rachel Johnson, Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning and Assistant Professor of Education and English. “That is also what makes the Corrington special. Our students and community don’t just read the work; they respond to it, create alongside it, and ultimately have the opportunity to enter into conversation with the writer himself.”
“One of the special features of the Corrington award is that a book by the recipient serves as a text in all sections of Credo, Centenary’s first-year experience course that serves as an introduction to both college-level writing and the liberal arts,” said Dr. Bellee Jones-Pierce, Assistant Professor of English and Director of the First Year Program. “Questions of how tradition intersects with and carries through the present, how we understand ourselves and our past, and how we come together to forge both knowledge and community are at the center of Hofmann’s poetics. His work is a powerful argument for art, history, attentiveness, memory, and desire.”
The College is sponsoring writing contests for students in conjunction with the Corrington Award. The Corrington Excellence in First-Year Writing Contest, sponsored by the First-Year Program, invites essays from first-year students inspired by Hofmann’s work. The Corrington Creative Writing Contest, presented by the English Department and open to all Centenary students, accepts poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction or hybrid work inspired by themes in Hofmann’s writing. The contests offer cash prizes totaling $450 and opportunities for publication in the campus newspaper, The Conglomerate, and the campus literary magazine, Pandora.
The Corrington Award and the student writing contests are generously underwritten by the Centenary Learning Commons and the Centenary First-Year Program. Funding for this project has also been provided by the State of Louisiana and administered by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH). The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of either the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities or the State of Louisiana.
The 2026 Corrington Award ceremony will be streamed live on Facebook at facebook.com/CentenaryCollegeLa. For more information about the 2026 Corrington Award, please visit centenary.edu/Corrington.
About the Corrington Award
The John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence is presented annually by Centenary’s Department of English on behalf of the college’s students and faculty to an established, critically acknowledged writer. The award honors Centenary alumnus and English major Bill Corrington (1932-1988), who was variously an English professor, an attorney in private practice and, with his wife, Joyce, head writer for several television series, including “Search for Tomorrow” and “General Hospital.” A prolific poet, he also published four novels, two short novels and three short story collections.
In 1991, Eudora Welty became the first Corrington Award recipient when she read her short story “A Worn Path” at Centenary’s Spring Commencement. The award is a bronze medal designed by internationally exhibited Louisiana sculptor Clyde Connell, depicting two primitive figures, one slightly ahead of the other, carrying a long object. A presentation box handmade by a local craftsperson accompanies the medal. For a full list of past recipients, visit centenary.edu/Corrington.