Update (11/8/2021): We have reached maximum capacity for this event. Be sure to check out the full Festival of Writers schedule! Lunch and conversation with Tracy K. Smith, award-winning poet and past U.S. poet laureate. For undergraduate students of all majors!
Inside Scoop conversations invite Illinois undergraduates to engage with the exciting work conducted by scholars whose work helps us understand what it means to be human in a world of rapidly shifting global complexities. These sessions offer an opportunity for all interested undergrads, no matter their majors, to engage with creative minds in the humanities.
About the Speaker
Tracy K. Smith was appointed the 22nd United States Poet Laureate in 2017. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015) and four books of poetry, including her most recent Wade in the Water (Graywolf, 2018). Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005. In 2014 the Academy of American Poets awarded Smith with the Academy Fellowship, awarded to one poet each year to recognize distinguished poetic achievement. She is Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
Part of A Year of Creative Writers at Illinois. Supported by the Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities.
