UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship recipient and National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes will offer a reading at Penn State's University Park campus as this year’s Emily Dickinson Lecturer. The reading will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12, in Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library. The reading is free and open to the public.
Hayes, professor of English at New York University, is the author of six award-winning collections of poems, including "Muscular Music" (1999), "Hip Logic" (2002), "Wind in a Box" (2006), "Lighthead" (2010), "How to be Drawn" (2015), and "American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassins" (2018).
"Hip Logic," which captures and confronts the nuances of racism, sexism and family structure through an overwhelming range of imagery and language, won the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and James Laughlin Award. "Wind in a Box," a collection named one of the best books by Publisher’s Weekly and awarded the Pushcart Prize, expands upon the themes presented in "Hip Logic" within the contexts of identity and the pursuit of freedom under smothering confinement. "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins," a 2018 finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, is made up of sonnets written during the first 200 days of the Trump presidency and explores America’s demons, triumphs, dreams and nightmares in stunning and original verse.