Visiting Authors: 2020-present
Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series
2024 Tracy K. Smith: Poet, memoirist, editor, translator, librettist
Poet Laureate of the United States, 2017-2019; Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; elected member
of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American
Philosophical Society. Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Academy Fellowship of the
Academy of American Poets, the Harvard Arts Medal, the Columbia Medal for Excellence, a Smithsonian Ingenuity
Award, and an Essence Literary Award.
Major Works, Poetry: The Body’s Question (2003), Duende (2007), Life on Mars (2011), Wade in theWater (2019),
Such Color: New and Selected Poems (2022). Prose: Ordinary Light (2015). To Free the Captives (2023).
Librettos: Castor and Patience (2022), The Righteous (2024.
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2023 Robert Jones, Jr.: Novelist and essayist
New York Times bestselling author, Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, NAIBA Book of the Year Award,
National Book Award finalist
Major Works: Son of Baldwin, The Prophets
2022 Brit Bennett: Novelist and essayist
New York Times bestselling author, Hopwood Award, Hurston/Wright Award
Major works: The Mothers, The Vanishing Half
2020-21 Roxane Gay: Writer of memoir and fiction, essayist, editor, and anthologist
Pen Center USA Freedom to Write Award, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, Eisner Award,
two Lambda Literary Awards
Major works: Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, Black Panther: World of Wakanda, Difficult Women, Hunger,
Not that Bad, The Best American Short Stories 2018, The Banks, the Selected Works of Audre Lorde,
Graceful Burdens, The Sacrifice of Darkness​​
