This event has been cancelled.
The Bill Morgan Distinguished Poet Series is proud to present two events with New York Times best-selling poet, Claudia Rankine.
The first is a poetry reading at the Normal Theater that will be held Thursday, April 7, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Earlier that day at 4 p.m., Rankine will host a discussion at the Hansen Student Center at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Rankine’s visit is co-sponsored by generous contributions from ISU Emeritus Professor Bill Morgan and a number of departments and offices at Illinois State University and Illinois Wesleyan University.
Rankine is the author of five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019; as well as numerous video collaborations. Her recent collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the 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. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Rankine will join the NYU Creative Writing Program in Fall 2021. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
For more information, contact the Department of English at (309) 438-3667.
