William J. Harris and Evie Shockley
5pm, Sunday, July 26th
William J. Harris is the author two books of poems,
Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment and
In My Own Dark Way, and the bilingual chapbook
Domande personali/Personal Questions (Leconte Editore, 2011). His work has appeared in more than 50 poetry anthologies, including
To the Stars: Kansas Poets of the Ad Astra Poetry Project, Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans and
A Geography of Poets. He is the author of
The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic and editor of
The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader.
Evie Shockley is the author of two books of poetry --
a half-red sea and
the new black, which won the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry -- as well as two poetry chapbooks and a critical study,
Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry. Her poetry has been recognized and supported with the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize, the 2015 Stephen Henderson Award, and residencies at Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She currently serves as creative writing editor at
Feminist Studies and is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
