Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, and playwright. She is the author of a collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020); five collections of poetry including the acclaimed Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) and Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004), both from Graywolf Press; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019; and numerous video collaborations. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind.

In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts.

A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine joined the NYU Creative Writing Program in Fall 2021. She lives in New York.