Claudia Rankine, poet and professor of creative writing at Pomona College, will read from her works and present a discussion on racism on Monday, Feb. 8, at 8 p.m., in the Chapel. The talk is sponsored by the Dean of Faculty Office and is free and open to the public.
Rankine has published several collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the PEN Center USA Poetry Award, and the Forward poetry prize; Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric; and Nothing in Nature is Private, which won the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. Her work often crosses genres as it tracks wild and precise movements of mind.
Rankine has coedited anthologies including American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language, American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics, and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Her poems have also been included in various anthologies such as Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, Best American Poetry, and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry.
Rankine has been awarded fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation. She was also elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2014 she received a Lannan Literary Award.