Poet and author Claudia Rankine to speak as the next Poynter Fellow

Award-winning author and poet Claudia Rankine will speak on campus on Thursday, March 8 as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism.

“A Conversation with Claudia Rankine,” will begin at 4 p.m. in the Grace Hopper head of college house, 434 College St. It is open to the public free of charge.

Rankine, the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale, is the author of five collections of poetry, including “Citizen: An American Lyric” and “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely”; two plays, including “Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue”; and numerous video collaborations. She is the editor of several anthologies, including “The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind.” For “Citizen,” Rankine won the Forward Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (“Citizen” was also nominated in the criticism category, making it the first book in the award’s history to be a double nominee), the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the NAACP Image Award. A finalist for the National Book Award, “Citizen” also holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category. Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

In addition to serving as a Poynter Fellow, Rankine is the recipient of this year’s annual Visionary Leadership Award presented by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism was established by Nelson Poynter, who received his master’s degree in 1927 from Yale. The fellowship brings to campus journalists from a wide variety of outlets who have made significant contributions to their field. Among recent Poynter fellows are Ian Johnson, Margot Sanger-Katz, and Susan Glasser.