Claudia Rankine, author
Congratulations to our Essay Competition Winners!
$500 1st Prize: Sydney Norlander
$250 2nd Prize: Elizabeth Hommerding
$125 3rd Prize: Chassidy Walworth
$125 4th Prize: Emmarae Winter
The annual scholarship fundraiser is Dec. 2 at Barnes and Noble.
New first-year students received a copy of the selected text during your Huskies Advising and Registration session, giving you the opportunity to read the book by the start of your first semester at St. Cloud State. The purpose of this program is to provide a common academic experience for all new first-year students, which integrates both curricular and co-curricular activities throughout the year. In addition to events around the book at your New Student Orientation in August, many of you will use the book in at least one class you take during your first year, and all of you will have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of programs throughout 2017-18 related to the book and issues it raises.
Your participation in the Common Reading Program will:
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the Bobbitt National Poetry Prize, as well as finalist for the National Book Award, "Citizen: An American Lyric" is a collection of poetry, prose, and images that provides a provocative analysis of race in America, with a deep commitment to advancing equality. In the poetry and prose that comprise this work, Rankine explores the everyday microaggressions faced by women and people of color. The creative format opens a space for critique, but also for sitting with the challenges of racial prejudice and racism.
The book was written with grants from The Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support Grant, the National Endowment for the Arts and The Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota.
Winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award
Winner of the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry
Winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection
Winner of the 2015 PEN Open Book Award
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and finalist in Criticism
Winner of Poets and Writers' Jackson Poetry Prize
One of the Guardian's Best Politics Books of 2015
One of the Guardian's Readers' Books of the Year for 2015
One of Entropy's Best Nonfiction books of 2015
Minnesota Public Radio’s best books of 2015
The Atlantic's best books we read in 2016
Finalist for 2014 National Book Award in Poetry
Claudia Rankine is an award-winning poet, Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University, MacArthur Genius grant winner (2016) and a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow.
Born in Jamaica in 1963, Rankine earned her degree in English from Williams College. In her work, Rankine explores the subjective experience of systematic racism and racial aggressions. She uses language that makes visible the ways in which microaggressions register in the body of those who internalize them. Yet her work also seeks to open conversations about how society might achieve social justice.
She has authored five poetry collections, plays, and edited numerous anthologies.
Claudia Rankine: Articles and Interviews
The Meaning of Serena Williams: On tennis and black excellence (New York Times Magazine)
The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning (New York Times Magazine)
Guardian Interview with Rankine (The Guardian)