Cave Canem Poetry Prize Reading: Malcolm Tariq

Hear 2018 Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winner Malcolm Tariq read from his debut poetry collection Heed the Hollow (Graywolf Press, 2019), praised by final prize judge Chris Abani for holding poems that “are lyrically complex, charged, artfully and erotically made. It’s a rare and exciting debut.” Cave Canem faculty Chris Abani, recipient of a Guggenheim Award and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, kicks off the evening with an introductory reading. Free and open to the public. Refreshments to follow.

Malcolm Tariq is poet and playwright from Savannah, Georgia. He is the author of Heed the Hollow (Graywolf Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and Extended Play (Gertrude Press, 2017). Malcolm was a 2016-2017 playwriting apprentice at Horizon Theatre Company and was a finalist for the 2018 Princess Grace Fellowship with New Dramatists. His plays have been developed by Working Title Playwrights and Brave New World Repertory Theatre. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem and The Watering Hole. A graduate of Emory University, Malcolm has a PhD in English from the University of Michigan. He lives in New York City.

Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, received a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in English, Gender and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, and a Guggenheim Award. His fiction includes The Secret History of Las Vegas (Penguin 2014), Song For Night (Akashic, 2007), and The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007). His poetry collections include Sanctificum (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), There Are No Names for Red (Red Hen Press, 2010), and Feed Me The Sun – Collected Long Poems (Peepal Tree Press, 2010). His critical and personal essays have been featured in books on art and photography, as well as in Witness, Parkett, The New York Times, O Magazine, and BOMB. Through his TED Talks, public speaking, and essays, Abani is known as an international voice on humanitarianism, art, ethics, and our shared political responsibility.