James Harms, director of the creative writing program at West Virginia University, has been awarded a Literature Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Harms was among 45 poets chosen from a field of 1,500 applicants for the $20,000 award.

This is the best professional news Ive had in a long time,said Harms, who has won numerous awards as a teacher and scholar since joining WVU s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences in 1994.

The Literature Fellowships are the NEA s most direct investment in American creativity, encouraging the production of new work and allowing writers the time and means to write.

Through these fellowships, the National Endowment for the Arts is providing critical investments in the American arts,said Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA .

Harms is director of the Master of Fine Arts program in the WVU Department of English and the annual West Virginia WritersWorkshop.

Harms is working on a fifth collection of poetry,After West.In addition to his four previous books, his poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, including Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and The American Poetry Review.

The English professor is a past recipient of the West Virginia Teacher of the Year award presented by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. He has also been honored by WVU with a Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award and the Eberly College Outstanding Teacher and Outstanding Researcher awards.

We are delighted with such recognition of the talents of Jim Harms,said Rudolph P. Almasy, interim dean of Eberly College.The fellowship is good for himand good for our creative writing program.