The Department of English Language and Literature aims to teach all students to write and speak well and to read skillfully, thoughtfully and with pleasure. We offer many courses that stress literary ...

Nancy Morejón is the best known and most widely translated woman poet of post-revolutionary Cuba. Born in 1944 in Havana to a militant dock worker and a trade-unionist seamstress, Morejón graduated ...

“Are you there?” asks Robert Hass, in the opening poem of The Apple Trees at Olema. “It’s summer. Are you smeared with the juice of cherries?” A poet known for his perceptive renderings of the natural ...

Natalie Diaz’s poetry is raw, rhythmic, and tender. The New York Times called her debut, When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012), an “ambitious… beautiful book.” Pima and Mojave, and an enrolled member of ...

Cornelius Eady is the author of seven books of poetry and two librettos. Praised for his approachable and simple language, Eady captures the emotional vulnerability of life in a clean, elegant style.

Jamaal May, described by the Boston Review as a “poet as machinist”, writes exquisite paths between the melancholy and the sublime. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, May explores themes of ...

Tobias Wray's poetry looks through both historical and personal lenses to examine queer identity, masculinity, and family relationships. Often engaging with LGBTQIA+ history, figures such as Alan ...

Jay Wright is the author of eight books of poems, including The Homecoming Singer (1971), Dimensions Of History (1976), Selected Poems (1987), and Boleros(1991). In 1996 the Chancellors of the Academy ...

Gwendolyn Brooks has been a leading force in American letters for decades. Her poetry, writes Adrienne Rich, “holds up a mirror to the American experience entire, its dreams, self-delusions and ...

Tarfia Faizullah “twines a seam where wounds are re-membered, fingers quivering, spooling and unspooling what we know of healing,” writes Khaled Mattawa, a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award which circles their Black, queer, and HIV positive status. At once haunted, sensual, explosive and ...

Meena Alexander has called herself a “woman cracked by multiple migrations.” Born in India, raised in Sudan, educated in England, and currently a resident of New York City, she has drawn on ...