Writers@Grinnell to Feature Renowned Poet Tyehimba Jess
Event Information
Time: Roundtable discussion at 4:15 p.m., followed by the reading at 8 p.m.
Date: Thursday, April 4
Place: Roundtable in Room 209 and reading in Room 101 of the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, 1115 Eighth Ave., Grinnell
Renowned poet Tyehimba Jess, who bridges slam and academic poetry, will conduct a roundtable discussion about writing and read from his work on Thursday, April 4, as part of the Writers@Grinnell program.
He is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Olio also received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, as well as an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
Event Sponsor
Speaker Bio
Tyehimba Jess’ first poetry collection, Leadbelly, an exploration of the life of blues musician Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, was chosen for the National Poetry Series. The Library Journal, and the Black Issues Book Review both named it one of The Best Poetry Books of 2005. A Publishers Weekly review noted “the collection’s strength lies in its contradictory forms; from biographic to lyric to hard-driving prose poem, boast to song, all are soaked in the rhythm and dialect of Southern blues and the demands of honoring one’s talent.”
A two-time member of the Chicago Green Mill Slam team, Jess was also Chicago’s Poetry Ambassador to Accra, Ghana. His work has been featured in numerous anthologies, including Soulfires: Young Black Men on Love and Violence; Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry; and African American Pride: Celebrating Our Achievements, Contributions, and Enduring Legacy.
In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize, Jess has garnered many other honors, including a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Award. A former artist-in-residence with Cave Canem, Jess has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, as well as a Lannan Writing Residency.
A graduate of New York University, Jess has taught at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and in New York City at the Juilliard School, and the College of Staten Island, where is he a professor of English. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, as well as anthologies, such as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry Beyond and The Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, among others.