In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the NEA Big Read initiative has added books by contemporary authors written during the past fifty years and three of the new additions are poetry collections—Citizen: An American Lyric by Academy of American Poets Chancellor Claudia Rankine, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1999-2002 by Wallace Stevens Award winner Joy Harjo, and Book of Hours by Lenore Marshall Prize winner Kevin Young. If you're an organization considering participating in the NEA Big Read, we hope you'll take a look at the resources we've put together to help you bring poetry to your community.

learn more about the big read

learn more about funding for the big read