Hanif Abdurraqib

"While Hanif Abdurraqib is an acclaimed author, a gifted poet, and one of our culture's most insightful music critics, he is most of all, at heart, an Ohioan. Growing up in Columbus in the '90s, Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron were forged, and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make...

"A Little Devil in America is an urgent project that unravels all modes and methods of black performance, in this moment when black performers are coming to terms with their value, reception, and immense impact on America. With sharp insight, humor, and heart, Abdurraqib examines how black performance happens in specific moments in time and space--midcentury Paris, the moon, or a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. At the outset of this project,...

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew.

"When first published in 2017, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us became an instant cultural sensation, appearing in music videos, B-sides to singles by The National's Matt Berninger and Julien Baker, as an essay prompt on standardized tests, and led critics at NPR to herald Hanif Abdurraqib as 'one of the most essential voices of his generation.' This expanded paperback edition includes three additional essays by the author and an original afterword...

""I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too." Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines--whether it's the twenty-seven seconds...

Curated by award-winning and best-selling poets, this wide-ranging poetry anthology represents twenty years of poetry from the students and alumni of Chicago's Oak Park River Forest High School Spoken Word Club.

Selected from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and digital publications during the previous year, these stories capture enduring moments while celebrating the craft of writing at its most sublime.

"A poetry collection where personal is inevitably political and ecological, Motherfield is a poet's insistence on self-determination in authoritarian, patriarchal Belarus. Julia Cimafiejeva was born in an area of rural Belarus that became a Chernobyl zone when she was a child. The book opens with a poet's diary that records the course of violence unfolding in Belarus since the 2020 presidential election. It paints an intimate portrait of the poet's...