Event Details
Friday, October 16, 2026
6:30 p.m.
The Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128
Tickets: $20 | $15 Members
Join us for an extraordinary evening of poetry with the Academy of American Poets’ Chancellors, an honorary group of esteemed poets from across the United States, including Jericho Brown, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Natalie Diaz, Cornelius Eady, Nikky Finney, Kimiko Hahn, Ilya Kaminsky, Ed Roberson, Patricia Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Eleanor Wilner.
The evening will also feature the 2026 recipients of the Academy’s major honors, the Wallace Stevens Award and the Academy Fellowship, both of which are selected by the Chancellors.
Co-presented by the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence.
If you are a member, please check your email for a discount code to buy your discounted tickets.
Be a Poetry Champion
Your donation helps the Academy support poets at every stage of their careers and deliver poetry to millions across the country through free programs and resources. Give today to power poetry.
Readers
Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown is the author of The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry; The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), which received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; and Please (New Issues, 2008), which received the 2009 American Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. In 2022, he received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. In 2024, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Brown is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and the director of its creative writing program. In 2024, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of several collections of poetry, including The New Economy (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry; Rocket Fantastic (Persea Books, 2017), winner of The Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books, 2009), a finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Persea Books, 2005), winner of the Connecticut Book Award in Poetry. They teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Calvocoressi was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2026.
Natalie Diaz
Natalie Diaz is the author of Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Forward Prize in Poetry, and When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), winner of an American Book Award. Diaz has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Lannan Literary Foundation, the Native Arts Council Foundation, and Princeton University. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for the United States Artists, where she is an alumnus of the Ford Fellowship. A language activist, Diaz is director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University, where she teaches in the MFA program. In 2021, Diaz was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Cornelius Eady
Cornelius Eady is the author of several books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008), a nominee for an NAACP Image Award; Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), which was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), selected by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. In 2016, Eady accepted the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem, of which he founded with poet Toi Derricotte. Eady is currently the Chair of Excellence in the English Department at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2026.
Nikky Finney
Nikky Finney is the author of several collections of poetry, including Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts (Northwestern University Press, 2020); Head Off & Split (Northwestern University Press, 2011), winner of the 2011 National Book Award; and The World Is Round (InnerLight Publishing, 2003), winner of the Independent Book Publishers Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry. In 2020, she received the Wallace Stevens Award, given annually by the Academy of American Poets to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. Currently the John H. Bennett Jr. Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina, Finney was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2021.
Kimiko Hahn
Kimiko Hahn is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024); Foreign Bodies (W. W. Norton, 2020); and The Unbearable Heart (Kaya Production, 1995), which received an American Book Award. She has been honored with fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has also been a recipient of the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. In 2023, she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She is a distinguished professor in the MFA program of creative writing and literary translation at Queens College, City University of New York. In 2023, Hahn was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In June 2025, she was named New York State Poet.
Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf and Los Angeles Times Book Awards and a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize; and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), which received multiple awards, including the Dorset Prize and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award. In addition to his writing, Kaminsky is also an editor and translator of many books, including Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books, 2012) and The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (HarperCollins, 2010). He has also been the recipient of the 2023 United States Artists Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Fellowship, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. He teaches in Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts’ program in creative writing. In 2023, Kaminsky was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Ed Roberson
Ed Roberson is the author of many poetry collections, including Aquarium Works (Nion Editions, 2022); Asked What Has Changed (Wesleyan University Press, 2021), a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize; and MPH and Other Road Poems (Verge Books, 2021). Roberson has also been a recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Stephen Henderson Critics Award for Achievement in Literature, a Los Angeles Times Book Award, the 2008 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. In 2017, he received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Formerly a professor of literature and creative writing at Rutgers University, Roberson is currently artist in residence at Northwestern University. In 2023, Roberson was elected to become a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Patricia Smith
Patricia Smith is the author of several collections of poetry, including Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2025), winner of the National Book Award, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and long-listed for the PEN/Voelcker Award; Incendiary Art (Northwestern University Press, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award. Smith is also a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, making her the most successful poet in the competition’s history, and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. She is currently a Cave Canem faculty member and a professor of creative writing at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and Princeton University. In 2023, Smith served as Guest Editor of the Poem-a-Day series and was elected to become a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith is the author of five poetry collections, including Such Color: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf, 2021), awarded the 2022 New England Book Award in Poetry; Wade in the Water (Graywolf, 2018), winner of the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry and short-listed for the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize; and Life on Mars (Graywolf, 2011), winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is also the editor of the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time (Graywolf Press, 2018), as well as the author of two memoirs. A recipient of the 2014 Academy of American Poets Fellowship and the 2006 James Laughlin Award, Smith served as the twenty-second poet laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She is a professor of English and of African and African American studies at Harvard University, as well as the interim director of creative writing. Twice a Poem-a-Day Guest Editor, Smith was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2021.
Afaa Michael Weaver
Afaa Michael Weaver is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including A Fire in the Hills (Red Hen Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize, and The Government of Nature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Award. Weaver’s short fiction appears in multiple anthologies, including Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present (Little, Brown, 1997), edited by Gloria Naylor. He was a 2002 Fulbright Scholar to Taiwan, where he taught at National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts. In 2023, the Academy of American Poets awarded him the Wallace Stevens Award. Weaver is professor emeritus at Simmons University, where he held the Alumnae Endowed Chair in English. He is currently a guest faculty member in Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program. In 2024, Weaver was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Eleanor Wilner
Eleanor Wilner is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems, 1975–2017 (Princeton University Press, 2019); Tourist in Hell (University of Chicago Press, 2010); and The Girl with Bees in Her Hair (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). Her work has also appeared in more than fifty anthologies, including Best American Poetry 1990, 2014, and 2016. Wilner has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2019 Frost Award from the Poetry Society of America for lifetime achievement, the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and three Pushcart Prizes; fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Formerly an editor of American Poetry Review, she is an advisory editor for Calyx Press. Wilner has taught at a dozen colleges and universities, including over thirty years on the graduate faculty of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. In 2025, Wilner was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.