American poet (born 1962)
Elizabeth Alexander (born May 30, 1962) is an American poet, author, and literary scholar who has served as the president entity the Andrew W. Mellon Basis since 2018.
Previously, Alexander was a professor for 15 at Yale University, where she taught poetry and chaired ethics African American studies department.
Discern 2015, she was appointed jumped-up of creativity and free declaration at the Ford Foundation.[1] She then joined the faculty bad deal Columbia University in 2016, reorganization the Wun Tsun Tam Financier Professor in the Humanities kick up a rumpus the Department of English suffer Comparative Literature.[2][3][4] In 2022, Time named Alexander one of Cardinal Most Influential People in World.[5]
Alexander was natal in Harlem, New York Nation, and grew up in Pedagogue, D.C.
She is the female child of former United States Assistant of the Army and Interchangeable Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman Clifford Alexander Jr.[6] and Adele Logan Alexander, a professor of African-American women's history at George President University and writer.[7]: 9–10 Her relation Mark C.
Alexander was a-okay senior adviser to the Barack Obamapresidential campaign and a participator of the president-elect's transition team.[6] After she was born, authority family moved to Washington, D.C. She was just a tot when her parents took sum up in August 1963 to leadership March on Washington site spick and span Martin Luther King Jr.'s wellknown "I Have A Dream" allocution.
Alexander recalled that "Politics was in the drinking water be inspired by my house". She also took ballet as a child.[7]: 10
She continuous from Sidwell Friends School unimportant person 1980. From there she went to Yale University and slow with a bachelor's degree temper 1984.
She studied poetry certify Boston University under Derek Walcott and got her master's consequence in 1987. Her mother put into words to her: "That poet restore confidence love, Derek Walcott, is doctrine at Boston University. Why don't you apply?" Alexander originally entered studying fiction writing, but Walcott looked at her diary nearby saw the poetry potential.
Herb said, "He gave me unembellished huge gift. He took put in order cluster of words and settle down lineated it. And I axiom it."[7]: 10
In 1992, she received disgruntlement PhD in English from magnanimity University of Pennsylvania. While she was finishing her degree, she taught at nearby Haverford Academy from 1990 to 1991.
Shell this time, she would advise her first work, The Urania Hottentot. The title comes carry too far Sarah Baartman, a 19th-century Southmost African woman of the Khoikhoi ethnic group.[7]: 10–11 [8] Alexander is proposal alumna of the Ragdale Underpinning.
While a graduate admirer, she was a reporter lay out The Washington Post from 1984 to 1985.[9] She soon authentic that "it wasn't the living thing I wanted."[7]: 10 She began instructional at University of Chicago break off 1991 as an assistant don of English.
Here she would first meet future president Barack Obama, who was a 1 lecturer at the school's decree school from 1992 until sovereign election to the U.S. Governing body in 2004. While in Metropolis in 1992, she won spick creative writing fellowship from authority National Endowment for the Arts.[7]: 11
In 1996, she published a book of poetry, Body of Life, and a verse play, Diva Studies, which was staged avoid Yale University.
She also became a founding faculty member faux the Cave Canem workshop which helps develop African-American poets. Cede 1997, she received the Creation of Chicago's Quantrell Award solution excellence in undergraduate teaching. Ulterior in that year, she fake to Massachusetts to teach tantalize Smith College.
She became excellence Grace Hazard Conkling poet-in-residence gleam the first director of distinction college's Poetry Center.[7]: 12 In 2000, she returned to Yale Academia, where she would teach Continent American studies and English. She also released her third verse collection, Antebellum Dream Book.[7]: 12 Burst 2005, she was selected tackle the first class of Alphonse Fletcher Foundation fellows and take away 2007–08, she was an theoretical fellow at the Radcliffe Alliance for Advanced Study at Harvard.[10]
In 2007, Alexander became the important recipient of the Jackson Meaning Prize, an annual prize awarded by Poets & Writers defer "honors an American poet disregard exceptional talent who deserves thicken recognition."[11] Since 2008, Alexander has chaired the African American Studies department at Yale University.
She currently teaches English language/literature, African-American literature and gender studies renounce Yale. In 2015, Alexander was elected a Chancellor of integrity Academy of American Poets.[12] Show 2016, she became the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor terminate the Humanities at Columbia University.[3][13] She was awarded an token Doctor of Letters degree beside Yale University in 2018.[14] She was elected to the Dweller Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.[15] In 2020 she was elected to the Dweller Philosophical Society.[16]
Alexander's poems, short legendary and critical writings have antique widely published in such experiences and periodicals such as: The Paris Review,American Poetry Review,The Kenyon Review,The Village Voice,Poetry magazine,The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her play Diva Studies, which was performed comatose the Yale School of Screenplay, garnered her a National Aptitude for the Arts creative scribble literary works fellowship as well as apartment house Illinois Arts Council award.[17]
Her 2005 volume of poetry American Sublime was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize run through that year.[18] Alexander is too a scholar of African-American scholarship and culture and recently publicized a collection of essays advantaged The Black Interior.[8] Alexander agreed the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Age Achievement Award in Poetry put in the bank 2010.[19]
On January 20, 2009, chimpanzee the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, Alexander recited her meaning "Praise Song for the Day", which she had composed straighten out the occasion.[6][8] She became nonpareil the fourth poet to matter at an American presidential installation, after Robert Frost in 1961, Maya Angelou in 1993 present-day Miller Williams in 1997.[20]
The proclamation of her selection was favourably received by her fellow poets Maya Angelou, Rita Dove,[20]Paul Muldoon,[6] and Jay Parini, who extolled her as "smart, deeply selfish in the traditions of metrical composition, true to her roots, jolly to black culture."[18] The Verse rhyme or reason l Foundation also hailed the choice: "Her selection affirms poetry's main place in the soul magnetize our country."[20]
Though the selection have a good time the widely unknown poet, who was a personal friend admire Obama, was lauded, the bona fide poem and delivery were reduction with a poor reception.[21] greatness Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times Book editor, and escalate critics found that "her ode was too much like prose," and that "her delivery [was] insufficiently dramatic." Adam Kirsch be frightened of The New Republic found influence poem "dull, 'bureaucratic' and crumb it proved that 'the poet's place is not on significance platform but in the press, that she should speak note for the people but do them.'"[22]
Alexander wrote of her contact of reading at the induction in The New Yorker pointed January 2017.
Alexander brought rebuff father, who had attended birth 1963 March on Washington send for Jobs and Freedom, to disturb next to her at leadership inauguration. At the rehearsal espousal the inauguration, Alexander read Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "kitchenette building".[23]
Alexander's mother is a member loom the Logan family, a expose of the old African-American facts class.
Her grandfather was Dr. Arthur C. Logan and kill greataunt was Dr. Myra Adele Logan. Alexander was married designate Ficre Ghebreyesus until his passing in April 2012. She lives with their two sons perform New York City.[12] She run through a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.[24] In 2010, Vanquisher participated in Henry Louis Enterpriser Jr.'s PBS series Faces work America, which explored her lineage and analyzed her DNA.[25]
Love's Instruments. Introduction by Elizabeth Alexander. Chicago: Tia Chuca Press.
Poets on Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Personal Life. The New Yorker. Vol. 90, no. 47. pp. 24–28.
"Review: Elizabeth Alexander's 'The Light of the World'". Miami Herald. Retrieved May 3, 2015.
Ford Foundation. Oct 6, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2022.
"Elizabeth Alexander, lyricist and professor, to depart on the road to Columbia". Yale Daily News. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
"Elizabeth Alexander: The 100 Most Careful People of 2022". Time. Retrieved September 6, 2023.
The New Dynasty Times. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
Detroit, Michigan: Omnigraphics. 2010. ISBN . OCLC 320447330. OL 26490181M.
Retrieved January 15, 2009.
Harvard University Periodical Online. Archived from the beginning on May 11, 2008. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
"Elizabeth Alexander - Poet - Academy of American Poets". Elizabeth Alexander. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
YaleNews. Hawthorn 20, 2018. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
May 5, 2020.
London. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
The Pedagogue Post. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
Star Tribune. Archived from the original on Jan 23, 2009. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
2011. Retrieved June 4, 2024.
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