Buffalo, NY – The Canisius University Contemporary Writers Series will welcome award-winning poet, essayist and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib to campus at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26. The event will take place in the Montante Cultural Center, and is free and open to the public. A question and answer session and reception will follow the reading.
A native of Columbus, OH, Abdurraqib is the author of two poetry collections: The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and A Fortune for Your Disaster, winner of the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and The Chicago Tribune. Abdurraqib’s most recent book is A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, a National Book Award Finalist. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Founded with a grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation and continued through the Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professorship Program, the Contemporary Writers Series is generously supported today by the Hassett, Scoma and Lowery Endowments and with the cooperation of The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Just Buffalo Literary Center, the Center for Urban Education and Talking Leaves Books.
For more information, contact Mick Cochrane, PhD, professor of English and coordinator of the Contemporary Writers Series, at (716)888-2662 or @email.
One of 27 Jesuit universities in the nation, Canisius is the premier private university in Western New York. Canisius prepares leaders – intelligent, caring, faithful individuals – able to pursue and promote excellence in their professions, their communities and their service to humanity.
