Library Prizes
Through the Bollingen Prize for Poetry and the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes, Yale Library enables the University to honor and foster extraordinary literary achievement. The library's student prizes recognize and reward outstanding research, book collecting, and graphic design by Yale undergraduate.
Undergraduate Student Prizes
Letters and Literature

Bollingen Prize
Establishing by Paul Mellon in 1948, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry has shaped contemporary American letters. The prize is awarded every two years for the best volume of poetry published in those years or for a poet's lifetime achievement in their art. The most recent recipient of the prize, in 2025, is Arthur Sze (pictured). In addition to the distinguished prize winners, the poets, editors, critics, and teachers who have awarded the prize have also helped to shape and define modern American literature. The prize is administered by the Beinecke Library.

Patricia Cannon Willis Prize
Beginning in 2025, Yale Library will award a new literary prize, the Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry. The Willis Prize will be awarded every other year to a poet who has published a book in the prior two years that, in the opinion of the judging committee, “represents the highest achievement in the field of American poetry.” The recipient will receive $25,000. Major Jackson is the first recipient of the Willis Prize for for his collection “Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002–2022,” published by W. W. Norton in 2023.

Windham Campbell Prizes
First awarded in 2013, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes are global English-language awards that call attention to literary achievement and provide financial support for writers to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. The prizes are open to English-language writers at all stages of their careers from anywhere in the world, as long as they have one published book or one professionally produced play to their credit. Writers may be selected for a body of work or for outstanding promise. The prizes are administered by the Beinecke Library.