Lucille Clifton was an American poet, historian, children's author, memorist, and professor. During her prolific career, she received numerous awards and honors. Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 won the National Book Award for Poetry, and she was nominated twice in the same year for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. From 1979-1985, Clifton was the Poet Laureate of Maryland, and she also received two Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Academy of American Poets. The American Poetry Review awarded Clifton with the Jerome J. Shestack Prize, and her children’s book, Everett Anderson’s Good-bye, won the Coretta Scott King Award. Clifton earned the 2007 Lilly Poetry Prize, which honors the lifetime achievements of living U.S. poets, and posthumously, she received the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America for her outstanding contributions to poetry.