Lucie Brock-Broido served as the Director of Poetry in the Writing Program of the School of the Arts from 1993 until her death on March 6, 2018. Born in Pittsburgh, she earned degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, and published her first groundbreaking book, A Hunger, with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1988. Brock-Broido went on to receive fellowships from the NEA, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as awards from the American Poetry Review and the Academy of American Arts and Letters, to name a few. Widely acclaimed in the United States and abroad as one of the most distinctive and influential poets of her generation, Brock-Broido published three further collections with Knopf, namely The Master Letters (1995), Trouble in Mind (2004) and Stay, Illusion (2013), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award. As well as for her lasting achievements as a poet, Brock-Broido will be remembered as an exceptionally passionate and brilliant teacher, having received the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award in 1989 and 1990, the Harvard-Danforth Award for Distinction in Teaching in 1991, and Columbia University’s Presidential Teaching Award in 2013.
Co-presented by the Academy of American Poets, Alfred A. Knopf, The Poetry Foundation, Poets House, and the Poetry Society of America.
With Mary Jo Bang, Sophie Cabot Black, Henri Cole, Timothy Donnelly, Emily Fragos, Harmony Holiday, Marie Howe, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Dorothea Lasky, Robert Polito, Srikanth Reddy, Tracy K. Smith, and Kevin Young.
Reception to follow at Dodge Plaza.