Visiting Writer Series – Claudia Rankine

Acclaimed poet and essayist Claudia Rankine will begin UNC Asheville’s Visiting Writer Series with a reading and talk via Zoom on Wednesday, Feb. 24. The series will continue with presentations by novelist and essayist CJ Hauser on March 16, and writer and critic Artress Bethany White on April 15. All readings in this online series begin at 7 p.m., and are free and open to everyone, by UNC Asheville’s Department of English. Pre-registration is required.

Feb. 24 – Claudia Rankine – pre-register at this link

Acclaimed poet, essayist, and Guggenheim Fellow, Claudia Rankine is a prominent voice in literary and critical race studies and the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize. She is the author most recently of Just Us: An American Conversation; six collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric; and three plays including HELP which premiered in March of 2020 at The Shed in New York City. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. This year’s Goodman Endowed Visiting Writer, Rankine is Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale. This event is also supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

March 16 – CJ Hauser

CJ Hauser is the author of two novels, Family of Origin and The From-Away. Her first full-length work of nonfiction, The Crane Wife & Other Essays is forthcoming from Doubleday in spring 2022. Her work has also appeared in Tin House, Narrative Magazine, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, The Kenyon Review, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Hauser teaches creative writing and literature as an assistant professor of English at Colgate University. Pre-register at this link.

April 15 – Artress Bethany White

Poet, essayist, and literary critic Artress Bethany White won the 2018 Trio Award for her poetry collection, My Afmerica. She also is the author of the collection,Fast Fat Girls in Pink Hot Pants, and most recently, the collection of essays, Survivor’s Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity. Her prose and poetry have appeared in such journals as Harvard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Hopkins Review, Pleiades, Solstice, Poet Lore, Ecotone, and The Account. White is an associate professor of English at East Stroudsberg University in Pennsylvania. Pre-register at this link.

For more information, please email UNC Asheville Professor of English Lori Horvitz, lhorvitz@unca.edu.