The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame announced Thursday that Puerto Rican-born poet and short-story writer Judith Ortiz Cofer has been chosen as one of four 2009 inductees. She is joined by Georgia Douglas Camp Johnson (1886-1966), Walter Francis White (1893-1955) and Philip Lee Williams. Ortiz Cofer was a published poet before her major work of prose, The Line of the Sun, published in 1989, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Athens-area author Williams won the Townsend Prize for Fiction for his novel The Heart of a Distant Forest. Johnson was a poet, playwright, and an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. White was a journalist, novelist, essayist and civic leader influential in the Harlem Renaissance.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, Judith Ortiz Cofer has lived in Georgia for many years. She is the author of novels, poetry, short stories and essays. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Glamour and other journals. Her work has been included in numerous textbooks and anthologies including: Best American Essays 1991, The Norton Book of Women’s Lives, The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, The Pushcart Prize, and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Professor Ortiz Cofer has received numerous awards and honors for her writing. Most recently, The Latin Deli was selected for the Georgia Center for the Book’s “Georgia Top 25 Reading List.” The Meaning of Consuelo was selected as one of two winners of the Américas Award in 2003. This novel was also included on the New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age 2004 List.” Professor Cofer’s Young Adult short story collection, An Island Like You, received the inaugural Pura Belpré Prize from the American Library Association in 1996, as well as several other awards in Young Adult literature.
Judith Ortiz Cofer has received over 30 fellowships and grants, including awards from the University of Georgia Research Foundation, the University of Georgia Center for the Humanities and Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Lehman College. Ms. Cofer is currently the Regents’ and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. She lives in Athens, Georgia and Louisville, Georgia with her husband, John Cofer, a fellow educator.

The announcement appeared at http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/091909/uga_494743547.shtml