Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Faith in the Now: Some Notes on Poetry and Immortality

Mon, October 28, 2019
Dinner Program
Jericho Brown

Readers and writers are—and should be—skeptical of any framework that purports a clear divide between good and evil. We are compelled, exhorted, and trained to discover and to create worlds that are as complex as the lives we live. In his talk, poet Jericho Brown—professor and director of the creative writing program at Emory University and recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts—will explore poetry as a vehicle for representing that complexity.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019). His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies.

Brown grew up in Louisiana and worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans and graduated magna cum laude from Dillard University. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Professor Brown’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at CMC.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
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Claremont, CA 91711

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