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Meet Poet Claudia Rankine

In conversation with Dave Lucas, Ohio Poet Laureate

Poet Claudia Rankine will visit to discuss her powerful, award-winning book Citizen: An American Lyric.

Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric and four previous books, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. A provocative meditation on race, Citizen recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. The book was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award in Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and has won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the NAACP Image Award, L.A. Times Book Prize and PEN Open Book Award.

Rankine is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the winner of the 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize, and a contributing editor of Poets & Writers. She is also the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

Rankine will be joined at this event by Ohio Poet Laureate, Dave Lucas. Born and raised in Cleveland, Lucas earned his B.A. (English) at John Carroll University, M.F.A. (Creative Writing) at the University of Virginia, and M.A. and Ph.D. (English Language and Literature) at the University of Michigan. His first book of poems, Weather, received the 2012 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. He has been awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and a 2016 Cleveland Arts Prize. 

Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.

This event is part of the NEA Big Read and is presented in partnership with The Center for Arts-Inspired Learning, Ohio Humanities, and The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University.

This program is made possible, in part, by Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.