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NEA Big Read and President's Task Force on Inclusive Excellence Speaker
Claudia Rankine

New York Times Bestselling Poet, MacArthur "Genius" Award Recipient and the National Book Critics Award Winner

Claudia Rankine has written five collections of poetry, including "Citizen: An American Lyric," which was selected for the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read, and two plays. She also has participated in several video collaborations and edited anthologies including "The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind."

Rankine has received fellowships from the MacArthur and Guggenheim foundations. "Citizen" won several honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award and the NAACP Image Award. "Citizen" also was the only poetry book to be a New York Times nonfiction bestseller.

She is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University and chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.