Dan Albergotti, assistant professor of English at Coastal Carolina University, has recently received two prestigious awards for his poetry. He received the 2007 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize for his first collection of poems, "The Boatloads," and he also won a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Albergotti's manuscript was selected from 25 semi-finalists in the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize competition, and Edward Hirsch, poet and contest judge, will write a foreword to the published collection. Albergotti will receive a $1,500 honorarium, and the book will be published by BOA Editions Ltd. in March 2008 as part of the A. Poulin Jr. New Poets of America Series.

In addition to winning the poetry prize, Albergotti is also one of 20 artists recently chosen to receive a fellowship by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA).

Located near Sweet Briar College in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in rural Virginia, VCCA is a summer working retreat of visual artists, writers and composers. It serves more than 300 artists a year and is one of the nation's largest year-round artists' communities.

Albergotti, a former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, earned a master's degree in creative writing from the University of North Carolina and a doctorate degree in literature from the University of South Carolina.