Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil Reading & Conversation

This event is at capacity. Registration is now closed. Add your name to the waiting list. If you are an English instructor or student, email sutt0063@umn.edu.

Join the Department of English as the Esther Freier Lecture Series presents Gay (above right), author of The Book of Delights and The Book of (More) Delights, and Nezhukumatathil (left), author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments. The bestselling poets and essayists will read from their work and be in conversation with English Professor Douglas Kearney.

This in-person event is free and open to the public with registration. Register now. You will be checked in by name at the door.

Live captioning and ASL provided. For further questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email sutt0063@umn.edu or call 612-626-1528.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was published in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights (Algonquin), was released in September of 2023.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments.(Milkweed Editions, 2020). She also wrote four previous poetry collections including Oceanic. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She is poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program, and her forthcoming book of food essays is called Bite By Bite (Ecco, May 2024).

Associate Professor Kearney has published eight books ranging from poetry to essays. In 2023, Optic Subwoof, a collection of his Bagley Wright lectures, won the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Prize for Poetry Criticism and the CLMP Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction. His seventh, Sho (Wave Books), is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner. Buck Studies (Fence Books) is the winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry).

Ross Gay photo credit: Natasha Komoda

Masks encouraged. Staff and visitors attending in-person events are asked to self-screen for COVID-19 symptoms using the Stay Safe MN Health Screening Checklist. Staff and visitors are reminded to wash hands often, get tested, and stay home when ill or exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.