The Department of English will host a featured speaker event with author Claudia Rankine as a fundraiser for the Frederica Ward Memorial Scholarship Friday, Feb. 26, from 3:15 to 4:30 p.m.
Rankine is the author of:
- Five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely;
- Three plays, including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (Arts Emerson/ American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019 and
- Numerous video collaborations.
Her recent collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind.
In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine will join the NYU Creative Writing Program in fall 2021. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Attendance at this special event is free, but attendees who can are asked to make a donation to the Frederica Ward Scholarship Fund. All donations will directly benefit the fund and Bryant S. Mason (ADL ‘70) will generously match all contributions up to a total of $5,000.
About the Frederica Ward Scholarship
Frederica Ward was a beloved department assistant in the English department at CWRU for more than 17 years. When she passed away in 2010 at the age of 48, department members, family and friends began working to create a memorial fund in her name to advance the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing an annual scholarship to a student with a demonstrated interest in African and African American studies and culture. The department is nearing the required amount to be an endowment.