Claudia Rankine, a MacArthur “Genius” and National Book Critics Circle Award winner, will read from her work at UConn’s main campus in Storrs and at the Greater Hartford Classical Magnet School on March 13, 2019.
She will appear at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday March 13 at the at the Greater Hartford Classical Magnet School, 85 Woodland St, Hartford. She will offer a second reading at 7 p.m. that night at the Konover Auditorium of the Dodd Center, 405 Babbidge Road on the UConn Storrs campus. Both readings are free and open to the public.
Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2008) and the bestselling Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf 2014), which uses poetry, essay, cultural criticism, and visual images to explore what it means to be an American citizen in a “post-racial” society. As the Judges Citation for the Jackson Prize notes, “The moral vision of Claudia Rankine’s poetry is astounding. In a body of work that pushes the boundaries of the contemporary lyric, Rankine has managed to make space for meditation and vigorous debate upon some of the most relevant and troubling social themes of the 20th and 21st centuries.” Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the NAACP Image Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award for poetry as well as fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts.
The Wallace Stevens Poetry Program began in 1964 with funding from The Hartford to honor modernist master poet Wallace Stevens, a former vice president of The Hartford. In the last half century, the program has brought a roster of the most important national and international poets to Connecticut. This year’s program is sponsored by The Hartford, with additional support from UConn’s African American Cultural Center and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ English Department, Humanities Institute, and Creative Writing Program. For more information, please visit our website at http://wallacestevens.uconn.edu/