Zell Visiting Writers Series: Reading and Q&A with Tyehimba Jess
Join us in welcoming author and poet Tyehimba Jess for a reading and Q+A as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series, presented by the Helen Zell Writers Program in partnership with UMMA, with support from the Department of English Language & Literature.
Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”
Zell Visiting Writers Series readings and Q&As are free and open to the public and will be offered both virtually (via Zoom) and in person (in UMMA’s Stern Auditorium). Seats are offered on a first come, first served basis; please arrive early to secure a spot.
For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email kimjulie@umich.edu–we are eager to help ensure this event is inclusive to you.
More About Tyehimba Jess
Tyehimba Jess is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Olio, a 2017 book of poetry. Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, received a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was a 2004–2005 Winter Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team, and won a 2000–2001 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, the 2001 Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, and a 2006 Whiting Fellowship. He presented his poetry at the 2011 TedX Nashville Conference and won a 2016 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2018. Jess is a Professor of English at College of Staten Island.
Jess’ fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, as well as anthologies such as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Beyond The Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Power Lines: Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago’s Guild Complex, and Slam: The Art of Performance Poetry.
SUPPORT
The Zell Visiting Writers Series is a reading series presented by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art, with support from the Department of English Language & Literature, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and Janey Lack.