Paumanok Lecture: Claudia Rankine

Updated 10 March with photos from the event...

Claudia Rankine
(photo: Jake Matkov)

The LIU Brooklyn English Department is delighted to announce that poet and 2016 MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient Claudia Rankine will deliver the 2017 Paumanok Lecture on American Literature and Culture. 

(l) Professor Erica Hunt (Creative Writing
MFA Program, LIU Brooklyn
(r) Claudia Rankine.
(Photo: Jake Matkov)

Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; two plays including Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue; and numerous video collaborations. She is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. For Citizen, Rankine won the Forward Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (Citizen was also nominated in the criticism category, making it the first book in the award’s history to be a double nominee), the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the NAACP Image Award. A finalist for the National Book Award, Citizen also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. She lives in New York City and teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry.

Rankine may read from recent work and take questions from the audience. Her books will be available for purchase (and possible signing by the author).

More information will follow. Watch this space.

For now, direct any questions to Professor Leah Dilworth (English).

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