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Poet, essayist and playwright Elizabeth Alexander is the author of four books of poems, including American Sublime, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and a collection of essays, The Black Interior. The recipient of many grants and honors, in 2007 she was awarded the first annual Jackson Poetry Prize, a recognition honoring an American poet of exceptional talent who has published at least one book of recognized literary merit. In 2005 she received the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. She is a professor at Yale University and a Cave Canem faculty member.
Featured Poem: Body of Life
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| Cyrus Cassells is the author of four books of poetry, including Beautiful Signor, winner of the Lambda Literary Award, and Soul Make a Path through Shouting, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and received the William Carlos Williams Award. His The Mud Actor was a National Poetry Series selection. Additional honors include a Pushcart Prize; the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award; and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Featured Poem: Soul Make a Path Through Shouting
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Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York. Her books of poetry include Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, which won the National Book Award; The Terrible Stories (1995), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (1987), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Two-Headed Woman (1980), also a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. Her honors include an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Discovery Award and, most recently, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1999-2005. She has served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland and is currently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Featured Poem: Miss Rosie
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Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his "spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music." His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley. His 11th collection of verse, Wisteria: Poems From the Swamp Country, was published in January 2006. In February, 2007 Akashic Books published his novel, She’s Gone and Peepal Tree Books published his 12th collection of poetry, Impossible Flying, and his non-fiction work, A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative. He is the Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina and the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica each year.
Featured Poem: Meeting (for Lorna)
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Cave Canem co-founder Toi Derricotte was born in Hamtranck, Michigan, in 1941. Her books of poetry are Tender (1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize; Captivity (1989); Natural Birth (1983); and The Empress of the Death House (1978). Her The Black Notebooks, a literary memoir, was published by W.W. Norton in 1997 and won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction. Her essay, "Beginning Dialogues," is included in The Best American Essays 2006, edited by Lauren Slater. Her honors include the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America; two Pushcart Prizes; the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists; the Alumni/Alumnae Award from New York University; the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, Inc.; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
Featured Poem: On a Picture of the Buddhist Monk Pema Chodron
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Cornelius Eady is the author of seven books of poetry, the latest of which is Hardheaded Weather (Putnam, 2008). His Victims of the Latest Dance Craze won the 1985 Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and his The Gathering of My Name was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. Additional honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a 2002 Oppenheimer Award for the best first play by an American playwright, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. With Toi Derricotte, he founded Cave Canem in 1996.
Featured Poem: Brutal Imagination
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Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky, Nikky Finney published her first book of poems, On Wings Made Of Gauze in 1986 and Rice, a collection of stories, poems, and photographs, in 1995. Rice won the PEN American Open Book Award in 1999. Her latest poetry collection, The World Is Round, was published in 2003, and won the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry. She is editor of the anthology, The Ringing Ear, a rich, contemporary collection of 100 poetic Black voices.. Her contagious energy and passion for writing extend beyond academia. She travels extensively, reading to listeners, staying connected and engaged, and maintaining her commitment to the risky business of creativity. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College until 2009.
Featured Poem: Cotton Tea
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C. S. Giscombe: born in Dayton, Ohio and educated in the public and Catholic schools there. Later went to the State University of New York at Albany and Cornell University (MFA, 1975). I teach at Berkeley (having taught previously at Naropa University, Penn State, Illinois State, Cornell, etc.). I also worked as editor of Epoch magazine (all through the 1980s) and for the Housing Service for the Aging (Syracuse, NY); I worked for Capital City Taxi in Albany, NY and for the Albany Medical Center Hospital. My poetry books are Postcards, Here and Giscome Road and my book of linked essays is Into and Out of Dislocation. A new poetry book, Prairie Style is forthcoming from Dalky Archive in fall 2008. In progress, is a prose book about trains and train metaphors, Railroad Sense. Writing prizes include the Carl Sandburg Award and grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Illinois Arts Council, the Fund for Poetry, the Council for the International Exchange for Scholars. I'm a long-distance cyclist.
Featured Poem: Light, Bright, Etc.
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| Michael Harper is the author of 10 books of poetry, two of which were nominated for the National Book Award: Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970) and Images of Kin (1977). His latest book of poetry is Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems. The Vintage Book of African American Poetry is his most recent anthology. A portfolio of poems with critical commentary was featured in the Harvard Review (No 20, Spring 200l). Harper edited The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown, which was selected for the National Poetry Series in 1979. A professor of English at Brown University, Michael Harper was the first Poet Laureate of the state of Rhode Island.
Featured Poem: Sherley Anne Williams: 1944-1999
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| Erica Hunt is the author of three books of poetry, including Arcade, with artist Alison Saar, and Piece Logic. Her essay, Notes for an Oppositional Poetics in Charles Bernstein's The Politics of Poetic Form, has put her in the forefront of experimental poets.
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| Yusef Komunyakaa
was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1947. Komunyakaa’s books of poems include: Gilgamesh (a verse play); Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999; Talking Dirty to the Gods; Thieves of Paradise, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Magic City; and Dien Cai Dau. His latest book, Warhorses, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Komunyakaa is currently Professor and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.
Featured Poem: Immolatus
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Writer and folklorist Colleen J. McElroy received a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where she is Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing. Winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award, she also has received two Fulbright Fellowships; two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships; and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to the Bellagio Center in Italy. Published and anthologized widely, McElroy’s latest collection of poetry is Sleeping with the Moon.
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| Harryette Mullen is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Blues Baby: Early Poems and the National Book Critics Circle-nominated Sleeping with the Dictionary. She has been honored with a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters and the University of Texas at Austin, an artist residency from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Susan B. Anthony Institute at University of Rochester, and a Gertude Stein Award for Innovative Poetry. Harryette Mullen's teaching experience includes working with elementary, middle school, and high school students in the Poets in Schools program in Texas. She currently teaches in the English Department and in African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Featured Poem: The Fire This Time
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Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of many books and chapbooks. Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Fortune's Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. A Wreath For Emmett Till won the 2005 Boston Globe—Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems won the L.E. Phillabaum Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her most recently published book, written in collaboration with fellow C.C. faculty member Elizabeth Alexander, is Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color. Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and three honorary doctorates. The former (2001—2006) Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut, Nelson is an emerita professor of English at the University of Connecticut and founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers' colony.
Featured Poem: Epithalamium and Shivaree
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Carl Phillips is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986-2006 and Riding Westward. His The Rest of Love, a finalist for the National Book Award, won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry. Additional honors include the 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pushcart Prize, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress.
Featured Poem: As from a Quiver of Arrows
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Claudia Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry; Nothing in Nature Is Private, The End of the Alphabet, Plot and, most recently, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. She is co-editor, with Juliana Spahr, of American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language. Recipient of the 2005 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, Rankine is the Henry G. Professor of English at Pomona College.
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Ed Roberson is author of seven books of poetry, including Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In — a winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. His book Atmosphere Conditions was selected for the National Poetry Series and nominated for the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets. He is a recipient of the Lila Wallace Writers’ Award and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Roberson currently lives in Chicago and teaches at the University of Chicago’s Program in Poetry and Poetics.
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Sonia Sanchez is a poet, activist and scholar who has written sixteen books, most recently Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected poems. In 1997, Does Your House Have Lions? was nominated for National Book Critic's Circle Award for Poetry. Sanchez won the 2001 Robert Frost Award from the Poetry Society of America and the 1995 American Book Award for her book Homegirls and Handgrenades. She is also the recipient of an NEA fellowship, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Governor's Award for excellence in the Humanities (1988), and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1992-1993). Known as one of the leaders of the Black Arts Movement, she has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled abroad extensively. In 2008, Sanchez received the John Oliver Killens Lifetime Literary Award. She lives in New York City and Philadelphia.
Featured Poem: A Poem for My Father (96 years old on Feb. 29, 2000)
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Tim Seibles is the author of six books of poems; Hammerlock, Body Moves, Hurdy-Gurdy, the chapbooks Kerosene and Ten Miles An Hour, and, most recently Buffalo Head Solos (Cleveland
State University Poetry Center, 2004). He has received many honors, including an Open Voice Award and fellowships from
the National Endowment for the Arts. His widely anthologized poems have appeared in such
journals as Callaloo, The Kenyon Review and Black American Literary Forum. He teaches in the
English Department and MFA Writing Program of Old Dominion University
Featured Poem: Handsome George
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Ntozake Shange is author of the Obie-winning, Tony, Grammy and Emmy-nominated, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem. Her poetry collections include: A Daughter’s Geography, Nappy Edges, Ridin the Moon in Texas, and The Space Love Demands. She has taught at Yale University and New York University among others. Shange’s awards include an Obie, a Los Angeles Time Book Prize for Poetry and a Pushcart Prize. She resides in Oakland, California.
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Called "a testament to the power of words to change lives," Patricia Smith is the author of four books of poetry: Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection (Coffee House Press, 2006); Close to Death (Zoland Books); Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland), which won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award; and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her poems have been published in many anthologies, including American Voices (2005), The Spoken Word Revolution (2003), and Bum Rush the Page (2003.) Smith also penned the critically acclaimed history Africans in America (1998) and the award-winning children's book Janna and the Kings (2003). She is currently working on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman. A four-time individual champion on the National Poetry Slam, Smith has also served as the Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University, and been a featured poet on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and has performed her work around the world. She has written and performed two one-woman plays, one of which was produced by Derek Walcott's Trinidad Theater Workshop.
Featured Poem: Look at 'em Go
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Afaa Michael Weaver is Alumnae Professor of English at Simmons College. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including The Plum Flower Dance and My Father’s Geography, as well as short fiction and plays. He is a been a Pew Fellow in Poetry; was named the first Elder of Cave Canem; and was the first African American poet to hold the Poet-in-Residence position at the Stadler Poetry Center at Bucknell University.
Featured Poem: At Dawn in My Stables
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Al Young’s 22 books include Drowning in the Sea of Love: Musical Memoirs; African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology; the novels Who Is Angelina?, Sitting Pretty and Seduction by Light; Heaven: Poems 1957-1990; The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000; and Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006. His honors include Guggenheim, Fulbright and NEA Fellowships and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence. Poet Laureate of California since 2005, his latest books are Something about the Blues (Sourcebooks, 2007) and Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames | The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson (Heyday Books, 2008).
Featured Poem: The Old Country
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Copyright © 1997-2007 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.
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