CONWAY, Ark. (October 20, 2022)- Poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib will read and discuss his work on Thursday, November 10, at 7:30 p.m. in Reves Recital Hall on Hendrix College campus. A reception and book signing in Trieschmann Gallery will follow the reading, and WordsWorth Books of Little Rock will sell select titles of his work. This event is free and open to the public, and no tickets or reservations are required.
Abdurraqib's most recent book, A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
In fall 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow. “Omnivorous in his influences and prolific in his output, Abdurraqib is forging a new form of cultural criticism, one that is informed by lived experience and offers incisive social and artistic critiques,” said the MacArthur Foundation.
Abdurraqib’s work has been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is the author of the poetry collections The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster, as well as the collection of essays They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. His book Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times Bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Abdurraqib is from Columbus, Ohio and is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
This event is sponsored by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language, which are designed to enhance and enrich the study and teaching of literature and language at Hendrix College. For more information about this and future events, please contact Julia Lee McGill at McGill@hendrix.edu.