Join us for a lively poetry reading and Q & A with the 22nd United States poet laureate: celebrated writer Tracy K. Smith. As a recent article from the Harvard Gazette expresses, “Smith explores themes of love and desire, justice, loss, and human connections across time, history, and difference. Critics laud her clear language, expansive storytelling, and her engagement with the thorny paradoxes of everyday life and larger questions of American history, justice, and racism.” The event is free, but tickets are required.
BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE: Books by the featured authors are available now at the Illini Union Bookstore—look for the Festival of Writers display in store or visit their special dedicated web page!
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.
