Delight in a display of exceptional poetry showcasing new collections by Cave Canem fellows and friends. Terrance Hayes praises Aaron Coleman’s debut Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018), proclaiming “…this extraordinary debut epitomizes how the best of our contemporary poetry sings.” Camille Dungy's fourth poetry collection, Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), is lauded by Yusef Komunyakaa as being “earthly and visionary, a soulful reckoning for our twenty-first century.” Shane McCrae is the author of several poetry collections, most recently the National Book Award Finalist, In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which Ryo Yamaguchi describes as “…an astonishing precise account of a complex emotional past.” Free and open to the public. Refreshments served. Co-sponsored with The New School Creative Writing Program.
Aaron Coleman is a poet whose chapbook, St. Trigger, won the 2015 Button Poetry Prize, and whose first full-length collection is titled, Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018). A Cave Canem Fellow and Fulbright Scholar from Metro-Detroit, Aaron has lived and worked with youth in locations including Kalamazoo, Chicago, St. Louis, Spain, and South Africa. Winner of the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Contest, The Cincinnati Review Schiff Award, and the American Literary Translator Association’s Jansen Memorial Fellowship, Aaron’s poems have appeared in Apogee, Boston Review, Fence, New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. He is currently at Washington University in St. Louis as a PhD student in the Comparative Literature program’s International Writers Track.
Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). She has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press, 2009), co-edited the From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009), and served as assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (The University of Michigan Press, 2006). Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, and many other print and online venues. Dungy’s honors include an American Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, a California Book Award silver medal, two NAACP Image Award nominations, fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and fellowships from the NEA in both poetry and prose. She is a professor at Colorado State University.
Shane McCrae is the author of several poetry collections including Mule (2011), Blood (2013), The Animal Too Big to Kill (2015), and In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work has also been featured in The Best American Poetry 2010, edited by Amy Gerstler, and his honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. McCrae grew up in Texas and California, and was the first in his family to graduate from college. He earned a BA at Linfield College, an MA at the University of Iowa, an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a JD at Harvard Law School. McCrae lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.