'Invisible Racism': Claudia Rankine to read at Queens University Jan. 16

When Alexandra Schwartz interviewed poet Claudia Rankine last summer for the New Yorker, she asked her how her award-winning poetry collection, "Citizen: An American Lyric," came about.

Here's what Rankine answered:

I started working on “Citizen” as a way of talking about invisible racism—moments that you experience and that happen really fast. They go by at lightning speed, and you begin to distrust that they even happened, and yet you know that you feel bad somehow. My husband is a great fan, or used to be a great fan, of Tiger Woods, and so I started by watching a lot of golf tournaments. I am a great fan of the Williams sisters, and I would watch tennis. You began to see a lot of little moments, and they would happen, and they would happen, and they would happen, at the U.S. Open and at various other Grand Slams, and I thought, “I’m going to start documenting these.”

And as I began documenting them in Serena Williams’s playing life, I started doing it in my own life. Then I started interviewing people and asking them for stories in their lives. I specifically said, to people I met and to friends, “Tell me a moment when you suddenly found yourself feeling invisible or internally unsettled by something that came down to a moment that you then read as racism, but I want it to happen between you and a friend.” I didn’t really care too much about what people were doing in Ferguson, at this level. I meant in their day-to-day working lives. And then, as people began to tell me stories, I began to see it in my own life, everywhere, happening, and I just started writing them down.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, poet Claudia Rankine earned a BA at Williams College and an MFA at Columbia University. She is a former Queens University instructor in its MFA program.

Rankine has published several collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), a finalist for the National Book Award; Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1994), which won the Cleveland State Poetry Prize.

Claudia Rankine Reads:

When: 8:30-9:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 16
Where: Ketner Auditorium, Queens University
Cost: Free and open to the public.

Creech and Funderburk: Double-header at Queens University on Thursday

Two Queens University creative writing teachers -- Sarah Creech and Julie Funderburk -- will give a free public reading at 8 p.m., on Thursday in Ketner Auditorium on the Queens campus.

Creech is the author of  "Season of the Dragonflies," a rich, sensuous novel about generations of women who have made a fortune extracting the elixir of a magical flower that grows deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The scent has magical powers and imbues the wearer with good fortune. When the plant begins mysteriously to die, it's the younger daughter Lucia -- whose powers have been dormant for 33 years -- who comes into her own and saves the day.

Creech, who grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lives with her husband, the poet Morrie Creech, and their two children in Charlotte.

Funderburk is the author of a new poetry collection, "Thoughts to Fold into Birds." Her poetry has appeared previously in such literary journals as Ploughshares, Best New Poets and The Cincinnati Review. She's won scholarships to Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers' conferences, and she serves as poetry editor of the online journal storySouth.

A former managing editor of the Greensboro Review, Funderburk was recently named a semi-finalist in the prestigious Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.

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Queens Prof Named Pulitzer Finalist

"Stunned and delighted." That was Morri Creech's reaction late Monday afternoon when his daughter called him while he was teaching to congratulate him on being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection, "The Sleep of Reason" (Waywise Press, 2013).

Morri Creech

"My phone just blew up with calls," Creech says by email, "but I had no idea what the whole thing was about. It seemed unreal, especially since I publish with such a small press and didn't have any warning that this might happen."

Creech is writer-in-residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low-residency MFA program. Susan Ludvigson, prize-winning poet and Winthrop University professor emeritus, got to know Creech when he took her classes and workshops at Winthrop.

"He came to my classes as a freshman," says Ludvigson, "already knowing his calling, and having read most of the important poets in the English language, as well as the French and German poets. If he hadn't taken classes, I'm sure he would have arrived at his success on his own, because he's both brilliant and fiercely dedicated." At the same time, says Ludvigson, he was "quiet and humble in the workshops, offering helpful criticism to other poets, while believing that he still had much to learn."

Charlotte poet Beth Swann met Creech when she enrolled in the Queens MFA program in 2009. "Knowledgeable, affable, accessible and professional at all times, Morri remains to this day my trusted mentor," she says. "He's not only an asset to Queens, Morri is a man who impacts and empowers students and makes valuable contributions to our community."

Swann calls Creech's poetry "breathtaking," blending, she says, "a keen observation of life today with the music of the masters to create timeless beauty."

Creech, 43, was born in Moncks Corner, S.C., and studied at both Winthrop and McNeese State University in Louisiana. He's been awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and he's received grants in poetry from the NEA and the North Carolina and Louisiana Arts councils. He lives in Charlotte with his wife and two children.

The winner of the 2014 Pulitzer in poetry is Vijay Seshdri for "3 Sections" (Graywolf). The other finalist is Adrian Matejka for "The Big Smoke" (Penguin).