The Academy of American Poets is pleased to present our Fall Conversation Series in partnership with Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa in conversation with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Free and open to the public.
Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently The Emperor of Water Clocks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Wallace Stevens Award. Komunyakaa is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is currently Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University’s graduate creative writing program. He lives in New York City.
Cécile McLorin Salvant has been described by The New York Times as “the finest jazz singer to emerge in the last decade.” In 2009, after a series of concerts in Paris, she recorded her first album “Cécile,” with Jean-François Bonnel’s Paris Quintet. A year later, she won the Thelonious Monk competition in Washington D.C. In 2014, her second album, “Woman Child” was nominated for a Grammy. Her third album, “For One To Love,” won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2016.