Poetry with a Purpose: 2019 National Book Festival

Jericho Brown discussed "The Tradition" and Dorianne Laux discussed "Only as the Day Is Long" at the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

- Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown's first book of poems, "Please," won the American Book Award. His second book, "The New Testament," won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront and the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, as well as several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta. Brown's new book is "The Tradition."

- Poet Dorianne Laux held jobs as varied as a cook, a gas station manager and a maid before she earned her degree in English from Mills College. She teaches poetry in the Program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University and is a founding faculty member of Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program. Laux also is a contributing editor for The Alaska Quarterly Review. A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a recipient of the Oregon Book Award and the Paterson Prize, Laux has recently published "Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems."

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