Eloisa Amezcua and Tracy K. Smith Reading

A conversation with the author of Fighting Is Like a Wife and the two-term US Poet Laureate
Side by side head and shoulder photos of two people: on left brown hair to chin, face in shadow, wearing sleeveless shirt; on right, dark hair extending from ears up out of photo, medium brown skin, wearing black shirt
Eloisa Amezcua (left) and Tracy K. Smith
Event Date & Time
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Event Location
412 Pillsbury Hall

310 Pillsbury Dr SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

The Edelstein-Keller Endowment presents poets Eloisa Amezcua and Tracy K. Smith. Sponsored by the Department of English and the Creative Writing Program.

The event is free and open to the public. No reservations or tickets necessary. ASL interpreted. For questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email sutt0063@umn.edu or call 612-626-1528.

Eloisa Amezcua is from Arizona. She is the author of Fighting Is Like a Wife (Coffee House Press, 2022), and From the Inside Quietly (2018), inaugural winner of the Shelterbelt Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón. A MacDowell fellow, Amezcua's poems and translations are published in New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and others. She is the Associate Director of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America and serves on the faculty of Randolph College's MFA program.

Tracy K. Smith received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third book of poems, Life on Mars. Smith’s debut collection, The Body’s Question, was selected by Kevin Young as winner of the Cave Canem Prize for the best first book by an African American poet. Duende, Smith’s second book, received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Smith’s fourth book of poems, Wade in the Water, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her most recent book of poetry is Such Color: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2021).

In her memoir, Ordinary Light, Smith explores her own experience of race, religion, and the death of her mother shortly after Smith graduated from Harvard. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 2020 Smith and Changtai Bi co-translated Chinese poet Yi Lei’s book of poetry My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree. In 2021 she edited, with John Freeman, the prose anthology There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis, and was guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2021.

Smith served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States, during which time she traveled across America, hosting poetry readings and conversations in rural communities. She edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time during her laureateship, and launched the American Public Media podcast The Slowdown. In March 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Smith wrote the libretto for two operas: Castor and Patience, in collaboration with composer Gregory Spears, and A Marvelous Order, with composer Judd Greenstein and video artist Joshua Frankel. Smith is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and a professor of English and of African and African American Studies in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Amezcua photo credit: Amelia Golden

Smith photo credit: rachel eliza griffiths

Masks encouraged. Staff and visitors are reminded to wash hands often, get tested, and stay home when ill or exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.

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