On April 15, some 300 members of the Fordham community welcomed poet Claudia Rankine, the University’s 2016 Reid Writer, for a reading from her book Citizen: An American Lyric, the winner of the 2015 National Book Critic’s Circle award. In a presentation at the Lincoln Center campus, Rankine shared images of sculptures and other artwork with select pieces from Citizen, as well as observations about high profile events such as the June 2015 massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. She also screened a ten-minute long film of footage of recent police killings set to her own verses.
This year Rankine has served as Guest Editor of CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action, whose recent issue’s focus is on the theme Black Lives Matter.
