Grief Transformed: Elizabeth Alexander in conversation with Elizabeth Taylor
Robert Polito, President of the Poetry Foundation, introduces Elizabeth Alexander in conversation with Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune Literary Editor at Large at this year's Printers Row Lit Fest.
Currently the chair of African American Studies at Yale, Elizabeth Alexander is a highly respected teacher and mentor as well as a founding member of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to promoting African-American poets and poetry. Alexander writes on a variety of subjects, most notably race and gender, politics and history, and motherhood. She composed and read the poem "Praise Song for the Day" for Barack Obama's first Presidential inauguration in 2009, joining the ranks of previous inaugural poets Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Miller Williams. Alexander's book American Sublime (2005) was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.