An Evening of Poetry with Hanif Abdurraqib and Aracelis Girmay

Stanford Public Humanities and the Creative Writing Program invite you to an evening of poetry and conversation between two beloved writers, Hanif Abdurraqib and Aracelis Girmay. Book selling/signing to follow. 

This event is now at capacity. There will be a stand-by line in front of Tresidder Oak Lounge before the event begins, and we welcome individuals to wait there starting at 6 pm in case there ends up being room in the audience. We also invite you to fill out this form to learn more about any future events Hanif may be a part of. 

Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio and the 2025-26 Denning Visiting Artist at Stanford. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016) and A Fortune For Your Disaster (Tin House, 2019). In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

aracelis girmay is the author of four full-length poetry collections including the recently published GREEN OF ALL HEADS. She is also the editor of the anthology So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth as well as How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Her writing has appeared in e-flux, Granta, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She served as the Editor-at-Large of the BOA Editions Blessing the Boats Selections from 2021-2025. girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and is the Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford.