Poetry Reading: Catherine Barnett and Claudia Rankine

Thursday, September 12, 7pm

A reading by Catherine Barnett and Claudia Rankine followed by a conversation/Q&A and a reception/signing.

Open to the public. All attendees are required to RSVP in advance; please click here

About the Poets:

Catherine Barnett is the author of Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Alice James Books, 2004); The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012), which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; Human Hours (Graywolf, 2018); and Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space (Graywolf Press, 2024). Her poetry has been published in former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s column, “American Life in Poetry.” She teaches at New York University and Hunter College and works as an independent editor. She lives in New York City.

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.