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Elizabeth Alexander (born May 30, 1962)[1] is an American poet, essayist, and playwright, and a university professor.
[edit] ProfileAlexander was born in New York City and grew up in Washington D.C.. She is the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman Clifford Alexander, Jr.[2] Her brother Mark was a senior adviser to the Barack Obama presidential campaign and a member of the president-elect's transition team.[2] She currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut with her husband Fikre who owns the Ethiopian restaurant named Cafe Adulis located on College Street near the Yale campus. Her 2005 volume of poetry, "American Sublime" was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize of that year.[3] Alexander is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays entitled The Black Interior.[4] Alexander has degrees from Yale University, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her Ph.D.[4] While a graduate student, she was a reporter for the Washington Post.[1] She currently teaches English language/literature, African-American literature and gender studies at Yale. Beginning in 2008, Alexander has chaired the African American Studies department at Yale. In 2005, she was selected in the first class of Alphonse Fletcher Foundation fellows and in 2007-08, she was an academic fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.[5] Alexander's poems, short stories and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals such as: The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her play, Diva Studies, which was performed at the Yale School of Drama, garnered her a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.[6] Elizabeth is an alum of the Ragdale Foundation. [edit] 2009 U.S. Presidential inaugurationOn January 20, 2009 at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, Alexander recited the poem "Praise Song for the Day", which she composed for the occasion.[2][4] She became only the fourth poet to read at an American presidential inauguration, after Robert Frost in 1961, Maya Angelou in 1993, and Miller Williams in 1997.[7] The announcement of her selection was favorably received by her fellow poets Maya Angelou, Rita Dove,[7] Paul Muldoon,[2] and Jay Parini, who extolled her as "smart, deeply educated in the traditions of poetry, true to her roots, responsive to black culture."[3] The Poetry Foundation also hailed the choice, "Her selection affirms poetry's central place in the soul of our country."[7] Though the selection of the widely unknown poet, who was a personal friend of Obama, was lauded, the actual poem and delivery met with a mixed reception.[8] The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times Book editor, and most critics found that "her poem was too much like prose," and that "her delivery insufficiently dramatic." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune found the poem "dull, 'bureaucratic' and found it proved that "the poet's place is not on the platform but in the crowd, that she should speak not for the people but to them."[9] [edit] Bibliography[edit] PoetryYears linked to corresponding "[year] in poetry" articles:
[edit] EssaysYears linked to corresponding "[year] in literature" articles:
[edit] References
[edit] External links
Categories: 1962 births | Living people | African American academics | African American dramatists and playwrights | African American essayists | African American poets | African American studies | American academics | American dramatists and playwrights | American educators | American poets | Boston University alumni | Harvard University faculty | People from New York City | People from Washington, D.C. | Radcliffe fellows | Yale University faculty | University of Pennsylvania alumni | |||||||||
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