David Bottoms’s first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was chosen by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. He is the author of nine other collections of poetry, two novels, and a book of essays and interviews. His other honors include the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize, both from Poetry magazine, and an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Bottoms served for twelve years as poet laureate of Georgia.
