Late Night Debut, hosted by Amber Keller
This week we feature Rickey Laurentiis’s Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winning debut, Boy with Thorn, published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Judge Terrance Hayes says, “Rickey Laurentiis fills history with his ‘crucial blood,’ his ‘stubbornness,’ his ‘American tongue’; and history, in return, fills him with crucial muses (from Auden to Hayden), stubborn ghosts (such as Emmett Till), and manifold expressions of culture (southern, sexual, spiritual). The result is an extraordinary, and ultimately, irreducible debut. To paraphrase something Einstein once said, the true magic of this book can only be found inside this book.”
Act 1: Host Amber Keller covers entertaining book culture news and cool new debuts
Act 2: Terrance Hayes and Rachel Eliza Griffiths discuss Rickey Laurentiis’s debut
Act 3: Terrance Hayes speaks with Rickey Laurentiis about Wallace Stevens, questioning the old masters, and the hardest line to write
Purchase Boy with Thorn on IndieBound
GIVEAWAY: WIN A FREE COPY OF LAURENTIIS'S DEBUT.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE FOR DETAILS, THEN EMAIL
AMBER@LATENIGHTLIBRARY.ORG BY
MIDNIGHT ON JANUARY 1.
ABOUT OUR FEATURED AUTHOR:
Rickey Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, as well as fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book, Boy with Thorn, was selected by Terrence Hayes for the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.
ABOUT OUR CO-HOSTS:
Terrance Hayes is the author of five books of poetry, including Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award, and How to Be Drawn, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award. His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a United States Artists Zell Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.
 
 
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. Her most recent collection is Lighting the Shadow and her visual and literary work has appeared in the The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Poets & Writers, Guernica, Transition, and many others. Griffiths teaches creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Sarah Lawrence College.
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