Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection The Tradition (2019). His other award-winning books include Please (2008), winner of the American Book Award, and The New Testament (2014), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Brown also edited the anthology, How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill (2023). After teaching at several universities, he is now the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.
Camille T. Dungy
Camille T. Dungy is a poet, essayist, editor, and professor. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry: What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006), Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010), winner of the American Book Award, Smith Blue (Southern Illinois UP, 2011), and Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. Dungy is also the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Colorado Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, two NAACP Image Award Nominations, and fellowships from the NEA in both poetry and prose. She is also a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award, in 2010 and 2011, and a Silver Medal Winner of the California Book Award. She is currently a University Distinguished Professor in the English department of Colorado State University.
Cornelius Eady
Cornelius Eady is the author of eight collections of poetry, including the latest, Hardheaded Weather (2008), nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Several other titles were also lauded: Brutal Imagination (2001) was a National Book Award finalist; The Gathering of My Name (1991) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1986) was selected for the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Eady also adapted his work to the stage, collaborating with composer Diedre Murray on a libretto for a roots opera, Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Eady is currently a Professor and Chair of Excellence in the English Department at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricotte founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating artistic and professional opportunities for Black poets.
Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo is the author of three poetry collections and one memoir. These writings include: Totem (American Poetry Review, 2007), winner of the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize; Digest (Four Way Books, 2014), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; his memoir Air Traffic (Knopf, 2018); and his most recent work, Spectral Evidence (Knopf, 2024). He is not only a poet, but also an editor, essayist, translator, and educator. He is a Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University, and a faculty member with the MFA program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University. Currently, he is working as a visiting professor of creative writing at NYU Abu Dhabi. Among his awards for his writings, he has been honored with fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundations.
Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine is the author of five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric; 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, Claudia Rankine joined the NYU Creative Writing Program in Fall 2021. She lives in New York.
Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott has published a number of poetry collections and plays over the years. Some of his most famous works include: In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (Jonathan Cape, 1962); Dream on Monkey Mountain (NBC, 1970), which won him an Obie award in 1971; Omeros (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990), winning him the WH Smith Literary Award in 1991; and White Egrets (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), winning him a T.S. Eliot Prize, as well as the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. In 1950, Walcott and his twin brother co-founded the Trinidad Theater Workshop. While working at Boston University in 1981, he founded the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. From there he taught at Columbia University, Yale University, Rutgers University, and Essex University. Among the previously stated awards, Derek Walcott’s honors consist of: the Cholmondeley Award, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship “genius award”, the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, the Art Council of Wales International Writers Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex, the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award, and was awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Lucia.
Marcus Wicker
Marcus Wicker is the author of two poetry collections: Silencer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award and Arnold Adoff Award; and Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial, 2012), which was selected for the National Poetry Series by D.A. Powell. At the University of Memphis, he teaches creative writing in the MFA program. Wicker has been honored with a Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, Cave Canem Fellowship and a Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, as well as a Pushcart Prize.
