On Wednesday April 17th, Phillips Exeter Academy concludes its 2018–2019 Lamont Poetry Series with a reading by award-winning poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and cultural advocate Elizabeth Alexander.
Alexander is author or co-author of fourteen books, most recently a memoir, The Light of the World, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. In 2009 she composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Among Alexander’s many works include the books Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010; American Sublime (2005), The Venus Hottentot (1990); plus numerous essays, poems and fiction published in journals and anthologies.
Currently the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Elizabeth Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Columbia University and Yale University. In addition, she served as the Founding Director of The Poetry Center and the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in-Residence at Smith College, and a founding faculty member of the Cave Canem Poetry Workshop. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board and the Advisory Board of the African Poetry Book Foundation, and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund.
The reading will be held at 7:30 pm in the Assembly Hall, located on the second floor of the Academy Building on Front Street. The event is free and open to the public.
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