12/14/2023
By Joseph Hartman

English professor Sandra Lim has been named the 2023 Distinguished University Professor, UMass Lowell’s most prestigious academic honor for a faculty member.

Each year, the university recognizes one tenured, full professor for their outstanding contributions in teaching, research and service to the institution.

Professor Lim was hired as an assistant professor in 2010, received tenure in 2016, and was promoted to full professor in 2022. During her time at UMass Lowell, Professor Lim has won three teaching awards: the department’s excellence in teaching award, UMass Lowell’s Teaching Recognition for Innovative Assessment Practices, 2013; and the UMass Lowell Faculty Symposium Teaching Award, 2017. 

Professor Lim is the author of three books, a chapbook and dozens of poems in anthologies, literary journals and magazines. Her first book, "The Loveliest Grotesque," won the Kore Press First Book Award; her second book, "The Wilderness," published by W.W. Norton, won the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize; it was chosen by future Nobel Laureate Louise Glück.

Lim’s latest book of poetry "The Curious Thing" (W.W. Norton, 2021) was described by English department professor and chair Jonathan Silverman, who nominated Lim for the Distinguished University Professor Award, to have “placed Professor Lim in the very upper reaches of American poetry.” Lim recently received the Jackson Poetry Award, awarded by Poets & Writers magazine. The Jackson Award is one of the country’s most prestigious awards; one of the judges for the award was Joy Harjo, the former U.S. Poet Laureate.

Lim’s writing has appeared in a range of literary journals, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, The Baffler, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. Her poems and essays are anthologized in Counterclaims (Dalkey Archive Press, 2020), The Poem’s Country (Pleiades Press, 2018), The Echoing Green (The Modern Library, 2016), and Among Margins (Ricochet Editions, 2016).

In addition to her publications, Lim’s honors include a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2015 Levis Reading Prize for "The Wilderness," as well as residency fellowships from MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Getty Foundation.

Lim earned her BA from Stanford University, her PhD from the University of California Berkeley, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Lim is the 16th UMass Lowell professor to receive this award since it was established in 2008.