Join 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, as she discusses poetry, survival and our pandemic reality with renowned poets Jericho Brown and Danez Smith.

This highlighted Wintersession event will feature poetry readings by Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in poetry; and award-winning poet, performer, and current Princeton Arts Fellow Danez Smith. Professor Smith will moderate a conversation on art, America, and the feelings and determinations arising from this complicated moment. An interactive audience Q&A will conclude the evening.

Tracy K. Smith is Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the author of four award-winning poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012. She served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

Jericho Brown grew up in Louisiana and is the author of three collections of poetry. Of The Tradition, the New York Times Book Review writes: “In Brown’s poems, the body at risk — the infected body, the abused body, the black body, the body in eros — is most vulnerable to the cruelty of the world. But even in their most searing moments, these poems are resilient out of necessity, faithful to their account of survival, when survival is the hardest task of all.” In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Brown is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland. He is Director of the Creative Writing Program and a Professor at Emory University.

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. Smith is the author of Homie (Graywolf Press, 2020), Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Smith’s work has been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, the 2020 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Smith is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

You can register to join this event here. 

Co-sponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Office of Wintersession and Campus Engagement