Abdul Ali is the author of Trouble Sleeping (Winner of the 2014 New Issues Poetry Prize). He has received grants, awards, and fellowships from The DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities, American University, College Language Association, and the Mt. Vernon Poetry Festival at George Washington University. He will join the English faculty at The Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, MD this fall.
Patricia Smith is the author of six critically-acknowledged volumes of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, which was awarded the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, was the winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy American Poets, and was a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series winner (all from Coffee House Press); Close to Death and Big Towns, Big Talk (both from Zoland Books), and Life According to Motown, just released in a special 20th anniversary edition (Tia Chucha Press). She is a Cave Canem faculty member, a professor of English at CUNY/College of Staten Island and a faculty member of the Sierra Nevada MFA program.
Caroline Randall Williams is an award-winning poet, young adult novelist and cookbook author, chosen by Southern Living as one of "50 People Changing the South in 2015." In the Fall, she will assume her position as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University. Her first collection of poetry, Lucy Negro Redux, came out with Ampersand Books in June of 2015.
Co-sponsored by the Bryant Park Reading Room.
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