Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer-Prize winning poet and Senior Distinguished Poet in the New York University Creative Writing Program, will read from his work on Thursday, April 12, at 7 p.m., at NYU’s Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge, 40 Washington Square South. A featured event in the NYU Creative Writing Program Spring Reading Series, the reading is free and open to the public. For further information, call 212.998.8816.
Komunyakaa’s numerous books of poems include Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999; Talking Dirty to the Gods; and Thieves of Paradise, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His prose is collected in Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews & Commentaries.
He also co-edited The Jazz Poetry Anthology and co-translated The Insomnia of Fire by Nguyen Quang Thieu (with Martha Collins). In 1999 he was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.
The final event in the NYU Creative Writing Program Reading Series takes place on April 27 and features readings by graduating MFA candidates in the program.
The NYU Creative Writing Program, with permanent faculty members E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall, Breyten Breytenbach, Philip Levine, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Sharon Olds, has distinguished itself for over three decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The director of the program is Deborah Landau. The Reading Series, sponsored in cooperation with the NYU Book Centers and with the generous support of Robert E. Holmes, is a vital component of the Writing Program, bringing both established and new writers to NYU.