Writer's Reading Lucille Clifton

Hear Lucille Clifton, one of the most beloved and respected figures in American poetry today, read from her powerful explorations of race, womanhood, spirituality, and mortality. A book signing in the Wexner Center Store follows her talk.

Clifton won the National Book Award for Poetry for Blessing the Boats (2000) and has published 12 poetry collections, an autobiographical prose work, and 19 children's books, with more on the way. Her most recent book of poems is Mercy (2005); other titles include Ordinary Woman, Quilting, and The Book of Light. Her work has been anthologized in close to 200 collections of poetry.

Clifton has received many fellowships and awards, including the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize, the Shelley Memorial Prize, a Charity Randall Citation, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, selection as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, a Lannan Achievement Award in Poetry, and a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Writer's Award. She served as distinguished professor of humanities and holder of the Hilda C. Landers Endowed Chair in the Liberal Arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland until her retirement in the fall of 2005. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is on the board of chancellors of the Academy of American Poets and was poet laureate of Maryland from 1975 to 1985.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Creative Writing Program, Department of English.