In his third and most recent collection, The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), Jericho Brown focuses his attention on the black queer body, bringing both terror ...

A video looping like a dirge on repeat, my soul—a psalm of bullets in my back. I see you running, then drop, heavy hunted like prey with eight shots in the back. Again, in my Facebook feed another ...

In September of 1875, Smith College opened its doors to 14 students and six faculty members. Ever since then, we’ve been pushing the world forward in profound ways. Smith—and Smithies—have been a ...

The Department of English Language and Literature aims to teach all students to write and speak well and to read skillfully, thoughtfully and with pleasure. We offer many courses that stress literary ...

Medieval Europe’s diverse regional cultures were balanced by a conscious attempt to create a unified view of the world that embraced religious and social ideals, Latin and vernacular literature, and ...

Natalie Diaz’s poetry is raw, rhythmic, and tender. The New York Times called her debut, When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012), an “ambitious… beautiful book.” Pima and Mojave, and an enrolled member of ...

Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award which circles their Black, queer, and HIV positive status. At once haunted, sensual, explosive and ...

Nancy Morejón is the best known and most widely translated woman poet of post-revolutionary Cuba. Born in 1944 in Havana to a militant dock worker and a trade-unionist seamstress, Morejón graduated ...

Jamaal May, described by the Boston Review as a “poet as machinist”, writes exquisite paths between the melancholy and the sublime. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, May explores themes of ...

Jay Wright is the author of eight books of poems, including The Homecoming Singer (1971), Dimensions Of History (1976), Selected Poems (1987), and Boleros(1991). In 1996 the Chancellors of the Academy ...

Gwendolyn Brooks has been a leading force in American letters for decades. Her poetry, writes Adrienne Rich, “holds up a mirror to the American experience entire, its dreams, self-delusions and ...

Meena Alexander has called herself a “woman cracked by multiple migrations.” Born in India, raised in Sudan, educated in England, and currently a resident of New York City, she has drawn on ...