Elizabeth Alexander has published five books of poems: The Venus Hottentot (1990), Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the American Library Association’s “Notable Books of the Year;” and, most recently, her first young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008 Connecticut Book Award). Her two collections of essays are The Black Interior (2004) and Power and Possibility (2007), and her play, “Diva Studies,” was produced at the Yale School of Drama.
Alexander is a pivotal figure in American poetry. Her work echoes the inflections of earlier generations, as it foretells new artistic directions for her contemporaries as well as future poets. In several anthologies of American poetry, Alexander’s work concludes the twentieth century, while in others she serves as the inaugural poet for a new generation of twenty-first century voices. Her poems are included in dozens of collections and have been translated into Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic and Bengali.
Professor Alexander is the first recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.” She is the 2007 winner of the first Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, and a Guggenheim fellowship.
For over twenty years, Elizabeth Alexander has taught and mentored her students at some of the nation’s most well-respected colleges and universities including Haverford College, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and Smith College. At the University of Chicago, she received the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the oldest and most prestigious teaching award that the university presents. Her attitude toward mentorship informs her teaching outside of the academy as well. In addition to her work at colleges and universities, Elizabeth Alexander has taught numerous poetry workshops. Most significantly, serving as both faculty and honorary director, Alexander has been an integral member of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to the development and endurance of African American poetic voices. At her current institutional home, Yale University, where she is a professor of African American Studies, she continues to serve her students as both teacher and mentor. Teaching continues to be a high priority for Professor Alexander even she sits as Chair of Yale’s Department of African American Studies.
Elizabeth Alexander
Yale University
African American Studies
PO Box 203388
New Haven, CT 06511
Phone: (203) 432-9061
E-mail: elizabeth.alexander@yale.edu
CURRENT POSITION Chair, Department of African American Studies, Yale University
EDUCATION BA, 1984, Yale University
MA, 1987, Boston University
Ph.D., 1992, University of Pennsylvania
BOOKS Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, (with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon), Slapering Hol Press, 2008
Power and Possibility: Essay, Reviews, Interviews. University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series, 2007
Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, (with Marilyn Nelson) Front Street Press, 2007 (Connecticut Book Award)
American Blue: Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books (U.K.), 2006
American Sublime, Graywolf Press 2005. (Pulitzer Prize finalist, American Library Association 25 Notable Books of the Year)
The Black Interior: Essays, Graywolf Press, 2004 (Finalist for best non-fiction, Hurston-Wright Foundation, 2005)
Antebellum Dream Book, Graywolf Press, 2001 (Village Voice 25 Best Books of 2001)
Body of Life, Tia Chucha Press, 1996
The Venus Hottentot, University Press of Virginia, Callaloo Poetry Series, 1990. Reissued by Graywolf Press, 2004
EDITED The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, ed. and introduction, Library of America, 2005
Love's Instruments by Melvin Dixon, introduction by Elizabeth Alexander. Tia Chucha Press, 1995
PLAYS “Diva Studies” (directing thesis commissioned by Yale School of Drama, May 1996)
Collaborator, “Doppler Incident,” conceived and directed by Kerry James Marshall, BAM/New Wave Festival, New York City, 1997
HONORS & FELLOWSHIPS Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 2007-2008
Inaugural recipient, Jackson Poetry Prize, $50,000. Grant by anonymous nomination, administered by Poets and Writers, Spring 2007
Alphonse Fletcher, Sr., Fellowship, 2005 (inaugural year of the program)
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2002
Visiting Fellow, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, 1999-2000. Fellow, 2005-8
Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, University of Chicago, 1997
Chicago Humanities Institute Fellowship, 1993-94
Fellow, Ragdale Foundation, Summer 1994
NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, 1992
Fellow, Corporation of Yaddo, Summers 1990 and 1991
Scholar-in-Residence, Haverford College, 1990-91
TEACHING Yale University, African American and American Studies and English, 2000 to date
Napa Valley Writers Workshop, Summer 2007
University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006
Arvon Foundation Workshop, Yorkshire, England, Spring 2004
Yale University Summer School, 2002
New York University, Graduate Creative Writing Program, Fall 2001, Fall 2003
Smith College, Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in Residence, 1997-1999
First Director of The Poetry Center at Smith College, 1997-1999
Assistant Professor, University of Chicago, 1991 to 1997
Cave Canem Poetry Workshop, Summer 1996 to date
Yale University, Spring 1996
Northwestern University, Fall 1995
Dunbar Vocational High School, N.E.H.-funded project on Gwendolyn Brooks, Spring 1993
Guild Complex, Chicago, IL, Summer 1992
Wesleyan University Summer Writer's Conference, 1991
Haverford College, 1990-1
Germantown Friends School, Spring 1988 and 1989
University of Pennsylvania (freshman English seminars), 1987-8
Boston University (undergraduate creative writing seminar), 1985
POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
(selected)
The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, ed. Arnold Rampersad, 2005
Jazz Poems, ed. Kevin Young, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005
Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin 1984-2001, ed. Jacklyn W. Potter et.al., The Word Works, 2003
Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali, ed. Robert Hedin and Michael Waters, Southern Illinois University Press, 2004
Blues Poems, ed. Kevin Young, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004
Poems to Set You Free, ed. Mary D. Esselman and Elizabeth Ash Velez, Warner Books, 2003
Poems for America: 125 Poems That Celebrate The American Experience, ed. Carmela Ciuraru, Scribner, 2002
The Poetry Anthology 1912-2002, ed. Joseph Parisi and Stephen Young, Ivan R. Dee, 2002
Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, ed. Medina Bashir Lansana, Third World Press, 2002
Bright Pages: Yale Writers 1701-2001, ed. J.D. McClatchy, Yale University Press 2001
Words for Images: A Gallery of Poems, ed. John Hollander and Joanna Weber, Yale University Press, 2001
Motion: American Sports Poems, ed. Noah Blaustein, University of Iowa Press, 2001
Step Into A World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, ed. Kevin Powell, Wiley, 2000
American Poetry: The Next Generation, ed. Gerald Costanzo and Jim Daniels, Carnegie-Mellon, 2000
Giant Steps: The New Generation of African-American Writing, ed. Kevin Young, HarperCollins, 2000
The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry, ed. Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton, Vintage, 2000
The New American Poets: A Breadloaf Anthology, ed. Michael Collier Middlebury/New England, 2000
Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation, ed. Paula Gemin and Pamela Sergi, University Press of Iowa, 1999
Powerlines: Guild Complex Anthology, ed. Michael Warr, Luis Rodriguez, and Julie Parson-Nesbit, Tia Chucha Press, 1999
Identity Lessons, ed. Maria Mazzioti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, Penguin, 1999.
Rebel Angels: 25 New Formalists, ed. Mark Jarman, ANTHOLOGIES Story Line Press, 1996
The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry, ed. Clarence Major, HarperCollins, 1996
The Norton Introduction to Literature, Sixth Edition, 1995
The Harper Anthology of American Literature, 1994
On the Verge, ed. Thomas Sayers Ellis, Agni Press, 1994
I Hear a Symphony: African-American Writers on Love, ed. Paula Woods and Felix Liddell, Doubleday, 1994
The Book of Eros, ed. Lily Pond and Richard Russo, Harmony Books, 1995
In Search of Color Everywhere, ed. Ethelbert Miller, Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1994
A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Conspicuous Form by Women ed. Annie Finch, Storyline Press, 1994
Every Shut-Eye Ain’t Asleep, ed. Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton, Little, Brown, 1994
In the Tradition, eds. Ras Baraka and Kevin Powell, Harlem River Press, 1993
A New Geography of Poets, ed. Edward Field, University of Arkansas Press, 1992
ESSAYS
(selected)
“Jean Toomer Travels to Sparta, Georgia,” New Literary History of America, Harvard UP
“Second Spring,” Meridel LeSeuer essay, Water*Stone, Fall 2007
“Contemporary African-American Poetics,” with Harryette Mullen, in “Cave Canem Tenth Anniversary Anthology,” ed. Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, University of Michigan Press 2006
“The Negro Digs Up Her Past,” SAQ, Fall 2005
“Some White Men,” in Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships, ed. Emily Bernard, HarperCollins, 2004
“The Genius of Romare Bearden,” in Something All Our Own: The Grant Hill Collection of African-American Art, ed. Alvia Wardlaw, Duke University Press, 2003
“‘The Space Between’: On Etheridge Knight” in Poetry Speaks, ed. Elise Paschen and Rebecca Presson Mosby, Sourcebooks, Inc., 2001
“Meditations on ‘Mecca’: Gwendolyn Brooks and the Responsibilities of the Black Poet,” in By Herself, Women Reclaim Poetry, ed. Molly McQuade, Graywolf Press, 2000. Also published in Associated Writing Programs Chronicle, March 2000
“Real/Not Real,” catalogue essay, “Real: Six Black Figurative Painters,” Bass Museum of Art, Miami, 1996
“A Black Man Says ‘Sorbet,’” catalogue essay, Two Cents: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Poetry of Kevin Young, Miami-Dade Community College Wolfson Galleries, 1995
“We Must Be About our Fathers ‘Business’: Anna Julia Cooper and the In-corporation of the Turn-of-the-Century Aframerican Intellectual,” Signs, (Winter 1994)
“Memory, Community, Voice: African-American Poetry in the Age of AIDS,” Callaloo (Spring 1994)
“‘Coming out Blackened and Whole’: Fragmentation and Reintegration in Audre Lorde’s Zami and The Cancer Journals,” American Literary History (Winter 1994)
“‘We’re Gonna Deconstruct Your Life!’: The Making and Un-Making of the Black Bourgeois Patriarch in Ricochet,” in Representing Black Men, ed. Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham, Routledge, 1996
“‘Can you Be BLACK and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(s),” in Public Culture (Fall 1994), and Whitney Museum, Black Male, 1994
“Walt Whitman and Gwendolyn Brooks,” Voice Literary Supplement, April 1994
“Living in the Jet Stream,” Voice Literary Supplement, February 1994
“The Anxiety of Authority,” The Women's Review of Books, February 1994
POETRY
(selected)
Literary Imagination, Spring 2006
SAQ, Fall 2005
Ploughshares, Spring 2004
Water-Stone Review, Fall 2003
The New Yorker, November 2002, January 2003, October 2004
Anuario Hispanoamericano de Poesia, 2002
Antioch Review, 2002
Ploughshares, 2002
TriQuarterly, 2002
Crab Orchard Review, Summer 2001
Shenandoah, Vol.50 No.3, 2000
TriQuarterly, Winter 2000
Fence, Spring/Summer 2000
The Chicago Review, Volume 46 #1, 2000
The Boston Review, Spring 2000
Callaloo, Spring 2000
Hanging Loose 75, 1999
Drumvoices Review, Fall 1999
The Massachusetts Review, Fall 1998
The Minnesota Review, Fall 1998
The Crab Orchard Review, Fall 1998
The American Voice, Summer 1998
Gargoyle, Winter 1996
Ploughshares, Spring 1996
Word, Summer 1995
The Chicago Review, Fall 1995
Voice Literary Supplement, February 1995
Voice Literary Supplement, September 1994
The Chicago Review, Summer 1994
Eyeball, Winter 1994
The Kenyon Review, Winter 1994
Poetry, February 1994
Agni, Spring 1993
Poetry, September 1993
Yellow Silk, Summer 1993
The Kenyon Review, Summer 1993
The William and Mary Review, Spring 1993
Poetry, May 1992
Callaloo, Winter 1991
The Paris Review, Winter 1991
Ms., Fall 1991
Chelsea, Winter 1990
The Indiana Review, Fall 1989
Black American Literature Forum, Fall 1989
Hambone, Fall 1989
Prairie Schooner, Fall 1989
Callaloo, Spring 1989
The Southern Review, Summer 1988
American Poetry Review, March/April 1988
Obsidian II, Winter 1987
The Southern Review, Autumn 1987
The Southern Review, Summer 1987
Callaloo, Winter 1986
FICTION The American Voice, Fall 1988
Callaloo, Spring 1988
The Washington Review, October/November 1987
BOOK REVIEWS New York Times
Washington Post
Chicago Tribune
Village Voice
Women’s Review of Books
Black Issues Book Review, 1986 to date
INVITED PAPERS
(selected)
“Anna Julia Cooper in Washington,” Conference on Anna Julia Cooper, Penn State University, October 2008
“The Ongoing Influence of Paul Laurance Dunbar on 20th Century African-American Poetry,” Dunbar Conference, Stanford University, March 2006
“Re-defining Experimental Black Poetry,” CUNY Graduate Center, March 2005
“Why Amistad, Why Now?: History Poems and the Contemporary Moment,” Yale University, “Why Literature Matters” Conference, April 2005
“The kitchenette, The World: On Gwendolyn Brooks,” Keynote Address, Medgar Evers College, Gwendolyn Brooks Symposium
The Windfall Address, Nichols College, Dudley, MA, October 2004
Commencement Speaker, Yale University Black Graduation, May 2004
“Black Alive and Looking Back at You,” Keynote Address, June Jordan Memorial Conference, LaGuardia Community College, May 2003
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson Scholar-in-Residence Address, Dillard University, New Orleans, February 2003
“Rethinking the Black Female Body,” Keynote Address, “Writing and the Difference ‘Race’ Makes” Conference, Southern Connecticut Community College, September 2002
“Langston Hughes and the Road to New Negro Poets USA,” Keynote Address, Langston Hughes and His World Conference, Yale University, February 2002
“The Black Interior,” John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary Study, Duke University, February 2002
“On Black Masculinity,” Princeton Conference on Black Masculinity, November 1997
Keynote Address, “Affirmative Action Babies, Bourgeois Blues,” Unnatural Acts Conference, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA April 1997
“‘The Block’ and Beyond: Bearden, DuBois, and Collage,” Symposium on Romare Bearden, University of Pennsylvania, September 1996
“Writing the Venus Hottentot,” Riverfront Forum, University of Chicago, November 1994
“Memory, Community, Voice: African-American Poetry in the Age of AIDS,” Conference in Honor of Melvin Dixon, CUNY Graduate Center, March 1994; Black Women in the Academy Conference, M.I.T., Jan. 1994
“‘Can you be BLACK and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(s),” Midwest Faculty Seminar, University of Chicago, April 1993; Contested Boundaries Conference, University of
California-Irvine, May 1993; Society for Cinema Studies Conference, February 1993
“Re-Visions of ‘Two-Ness’: Du Bois and Beyond,” Midwest Faculty Seminar, January 1993
“Issues in Black Women’s Literature,” Mellon Literacy Program, U. of Chicago, October 1992
“On Romare Bearden,” UCLA, Wight Art Gallery, Jan. 1992
“New Approaches for Teaching Afro-American Poetry,” PATHS/PRISM workshop, Philadelphia, PA, 1989
OTHER PRIZES 2001, 2000, 1998 Pushcart Prizes for Poetry
1997 Honorable Mention, “Diva Studies,” Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, Women and Theatre Program of ATHE
1997 George Kent Prize for Poetry, awarded by Gwendolyn Brooks
1994 Kenyon Review Prize for Literary Excellence
1993 Illinois Arts Council Literary Award
1992 George Kent Prize, Poetry magazine
1990-96 nominations, Pushcart Prize for poetry
1988 nomination, Pushcart Prize for fiction
1986 Larry Neal Writer’s Award for Fiction, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities
OTHER Judge, Bollingen Prize for Poetry, Yale University Libraries, 2005
2006 Phi Beta Kappa Poet, Harvard University
2005 Phi Beta Kappa Poet, Yale University
Guest Poet, Pablo Neruda Centennial Celebration, Santiago, Chile, sponsored by Fundacion Neruda and Universidad Diego Portales, January 2004
Neruda and Universidad Diego Portales, January 2004
Guest Writer, Calabash Literary Festival, Treasure Beach, Jamaica, May 2003
Judge, James Laughlin Award, Academy of American Poets, 2003-2006
Judge, O.B. Hardison Award, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2002-2004
Collaboration on Hillhouse High School Public Art Project with Sheila DeBretteville, 2002-3
New Haven Arts Awards Selection Committee, 2002
Poetry Director, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven, CT 2002, 2003
Poetry Judge, National Book Award, 2002
Co-founder, Cave Canem Legacy Conversation Series, 2002 to date
Interdisciplinary Panel Juror, Pew Charitable Trusts Arts Grants, May 2002
Visiting writer abroad, Berlin and Hamburg, Germany; Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Salvador, Brazil. Sponsored by Goethe-Institut and Callaloo magazine, 1995
Dramaturg, “Twilight” by Anna Deavere Smith, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, Spring 1993
Guest Editor, 1994 Missouri Arts Council Biennial
Poetry Panelist, National Endowment for the Arts, 1993
Consultant, Poetry Center of Chicago, 1993-94
Further information available on request
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