We are proud to present Patrick Rosal and Evie Schockley, who will read from their work commissioned for the Poetry Center's Art for Justice grant. After the reading, there will be a short Q&A and a book signing.
The University of Arizona Poetry Center’s Art for Justice grant funds a three-year project that will commission new work from leading writers in conversation with the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, with the goal of creating new awareness and empathy through presentation and publication. In particular, through the work of leading poets, the project will seek to confront racial inequities within the criminal justice system to promote social justice and change. Learn more about the project.
Patrick Rosal is a writer, musician, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Brooklyn Antediluvian, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize. A featured performer across four continents and at hundreds of venues throughout the U.S., he has received residencies from Civitella Ranieri and the Lannan Foundation, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the Fulbright Program. He is a Visiting Associate Profesor at Princeton University and Associate Professor at Rutgers University-Camden.
Evie Shockley is the author of semiautomatic (2017), winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the LA Times Book Prize. She has published four other collections of poetry—including the new black (2011), which won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award—and a critical study, Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (2011). Her other honors include the 2015 Stephen Henderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry and the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize. She is spending 2018-2019 as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Shockley is Professor of English at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
