A prolific poet, essayist and cultural critic, and the recipient of a 2021 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Hanif Abdurraqib is the author, most recently, of A Little Devil in America (Random House, 2021), a book selected as one of the best books of the year by The Chicago Tribune, and which Brit Bennett describes as “gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance.” Abdurraqib is the author of two books of poetry, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016) and A Fortune for Your Disaster (Tin House, 2019), as well as Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press, 2019) for which he was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction. His essays have been published in numerous places, including The New Yorker, Pitchfork and The New York Times, and his first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), was named Book of the Year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, and The Los Angeles Review.

Abdurraqib will read at Leo Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, April 25 at 7 p.m. Livestreams will be available on BDPC Facebook and YouTube pages. 

Featured works by Hanif Abdurraqib:

The Prestige
The Summer A Tribe Called Quest Broke Up

Photo credit: Megan Leigh Barnard