By Gil Pound

A ssociate professor of English Laura Newbern’s writing prowess earned her recognition as a 2025 Georgia Author of the Year. 

Published last year, her book of poetry titled “A Night in the Country” won in the Georgia Writers Association’s full-length poetry category.

"It’s nice to have the recognition for the book,” Newbern said. “But it’s also personally meaningful because I’ve lived in Georgia a long time, as did ancestors on both sides of my family.”

Written over the course of about eight years, the poems that comprise “A Night in the Country” have a common thread tying them together. The award-winning author calls it, “a deep sense of isolation – the kind that can heighten all the senses.” The book’s description says it studies the dual nature of the idea of asylum, how it is both a protection and an exile. It’s fitting then that the pieces were written in Milledgeville, once home to the world’s largest mental health institution, Central State Hospital.

“In its deep exploration of setting and silence, ‘A Night in the Country’ imparts listening as the throughline by which we receive clarity and the sacred,” Georgia Author of the Year judge Olatunde Osinaike said. “This collection reverses the albeit familiar storyline of inheritance into one of challenge and comfort for the reader, taking us on a momentous journey through glimpses at denial, triumph and our old eye on the new.”

The Georgia Author of the Year acclaim isn’t the only attention Newbern’s latest work has garnered. Nobel- and Pulitzer-winning writer Louise Glück selected “A Night in the Country” as winner of the Changes Book Prize, which came with $10,000 and a publishing contract.

Newbern’s earlier collection, “Love and the Eye,” won the Writer’s Award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation as well as the Kore Press First Book Award.

A Georgia College & State University faculty member since 2005, Newbern teaches undergraduate intro to creative writing, intermediate poetry writing, and graduate poetry workshops in the university’s Creative Writing MFA program. In her intermediate poetry class, Newbern has her students begin writing in fixed forms of verse, then gradually cuts her pupils loose to explore free verse that does not hold them to a meter or rhyme.

“Laura is not only an artist well-deserving of the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry, but should also be in the running for Teacher of the Year,” said Dr. Kerry Neville, interim chair of the Department of Communication and associate English professor. “She is beloved by her students for an equal rigor and grace in the classroom. Personally, I am very lucky, indeed, to work alongside Laura in the Department of English and to learn from her as a fellow artist-teacher."