Renowned Poet Claudia Rankine to Give Free Reading

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Poet Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Award-winning author Claudia Rankine will give a freereading of her poetry as the 2016 Distinguished Reader for the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation. The event takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Fayetteville Public Library, as part of Fayetteville’s True Lit literary festival.

The reading is open to the public. No advance tickets are required.

“Claudia Rankine is more than an esteemed poet. She’s an oracle of our age, charged with reflecting — brutally and truthfully — on critical social issues: race, privilege, personal identity,” said Davis McCombs, director of the Program in Creative Writing and Translation. “To bring such a powerful author to Fayetteville feels both remarkable and right.”

Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely and Nothing in Nature is Private. Her most recent volume, Citizen: An American Lyric, won both critical and popular acclaim and has become a touchstone in the recent national debates about race. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, where it gained the distinction of being the first book ever to be nominated in both the poetry and criticism categories. Other awards for the collection include the NAACP Award, the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award. It was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Award.

In addition to her poetry, Rankine has authored plays, edited anthologies, and collaborated in video productions. Her work has been described as crossing genres, but its effect is less a conscious rejection of boundaries than a willingness to let expression find the form it needs. 

Among Rankine’s many honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets and the Lannan Foundation. In 2014, she was awarded the $50,000 Poets & Writers Jackson Poetry Prize, which honors an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves greater recognition.

She teaches at the University of Southern California, where she is the Aerol Arnold Chair in the Department of English.

Rankine’s reading is one of many events slated for Fayetteville’s True Lit literary festival, Oct. 17-27, which also features an author talk by Newbery award-winning writer Louis Sachar. The festival is organized by numerous local partners, including the Fayetteville Public Library and Fayetteville Public Schools. For a full schedule and more information, visit the True Lit website.

Founded in 1966, the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences consistently ranks in the top 40 M.F.A. programs nationwide, according to Poets & Writers magazine. The Atlantic Monthly named the U of A among the “Top Five Most Innovative” M.F.A. programs in the nation. Noteworthy graduates include Barry Hannah, C.D. Wright, Lucinda Roy, and Nic Pizzolatto.

The U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation Distinguished Readers Series is made possible by the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, and the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professorship in Creative Writing.