The Academy Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets is awarded annually for "distinguished poetic achievement" at mid-career. Fellows are awarded a stipend which is $25,000. The fellowship program was created in 1946, since 1995 given in memory of James Ingram Merrill.
The fellowship was the first of the academy's portfolio of awards; the academy's website describes it as "the first of its kind in the United States."
Academy fellows: