Alice Fulton, the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell, is one of eight recipients of a 2011 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. The $7,500 award honors exceptional accomplishment in any genre.

The awards, to be presented in New York City in May, honor established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. The winners were announced March 22 by the academy.

"To be honored by such an eminent group of artists, musicians and writers means more than I can say," Fulton said. "Given the current cultural emphasis on science and technology, there's a real need for more awards like this one so that those in the arts and humanities can receive crucial encouragement at all stages of their careers."

Fulton earned her M.F.A. at Cornell in 1982 and returned to teach poetry in 2002. She also has taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the University of California in Berkeley and Los Angeles.

She is the author of eight books including the poetry collections "Felt" (2001), which received the Library of Congress' prestigious Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Poetry Prize, and "Cascade Experiment" (2004); a book of essays, "Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry" (1999); and a collection of linked short stories, "The Nightingales of Troy: Stories of One Family's Century" (2008).

Fulton's other honors include the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry in 2005; a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 1991-96; the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in 1990 and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1986.

Nineteen writers in all will receive American Academy of Arts and Letters awards totaling $185,000 this year, including playwright John Patrick Shanley, selected for the Award of Merit Medal for Drama.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was established in 1898 to "foster, assist and sustain an interest in literature, music and the fine arts." The academy's 250 members nominate candidates for the awards and a rotating committee of writers selects the winners. Professor Emerita of English and novelist Alison Lurie served on this year's committee.