Enjoy an evening of poetry with acclaimed poets and 2018 retreat faculty Chris Abani, Robin Coste Lewis and Amber Flora Thomas at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh. Recipient of a Guggenheim Award, Abani is the author of Sanctificum (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), and There Are No Names for Red (Red Hen Press, 2010) among other works of poetry and fiction. Lewis is the current poet laureate of Los Angeles and author of Voyage of the Sable Venus (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), which won the National Book Award. Thomas is the author of The Rabbits Could Sing (University of Alaska Press, 2012) and the Eye of Water (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), which won the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Free and open to the public.
Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright who grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, receiving a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in English, Gender and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Guggenheim Award, among others. His poetry collections include Sanctificum (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), There Are No Names for Red (Red Hen Press, 2010), and Feed Me The Sun – Collected Long Poems (Peepal Tree Press, 2010). Through his TED Talks, public speaking, and essays, Abani is known as an international voice on humanitarianism, art, ethics, and our shared political responsibility.
Robin Coste Lewis was born in Compton, California. She received an MFA from New York University and an MTS from the Divinity School at Harvard University. She is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), winner of the National Book Award. Lewis has taught at Wheaton College, Hunter College, and Hampshire College. Lewis served as Provost’s Fellow at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles, where she was recently appointed Poet Laureate.
Born and raised in San Francisco, poet Amber Flora Thomas earned a BA at Humboldt State University and an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. he is the author of The Rabbits Could Sing (2012) and the Eye of Water (2005), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (2006). Thomas’s honors include the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize from Rosebud magazine, the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, and an individual artist grant from the Marin Arts Council.