Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. She composed and recited "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and is currently president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities. She lives and works in New York City. Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. A nationally recognized thought leader on race, justice, the arts, and American society, she is also president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts and humanities. In her latest book, Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales, Dr. Alexander offers close readings of beloved writers—including Muriel Rukeyser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and June Jordan—paired with works by some of our most extraordinary contemporary visual artists, exploring how language, art, and values can sustain and inspire us. Her previous book, The Trayvon Generation—grown from her landmark, National Magazine Award–winning New Yorker essay of the same name—traces how a generation of Black youth has come of age unshielded from graphic violence, and how art has shaped their resilience. The book was named a Most Anticipated Title of 2022 by Time, The New York Times, and Bustle, and earned widespread critical acclaim. Among the fifteen other books she has authored or co-authored, her poetry collection American Sublime was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006, and her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015. Other works include Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (2010), Power and Possibility: Essays, Reviews, Interviews (2007), The Black Interior: Essays (2004), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990). She has been awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the George Kent Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry. Notably, she composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama. Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Yale University—where she taught for over 15 years and helped rebuild and chaired the African American Studies Department—and Columbia University. Prior to joining the Mellon Foundation, she served as the director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation, shaping Ford’s grantmaking vision in arts and culture, journalism, and documentary film. During that time, she co-designed the Art for Justice Fund, an initiative that uses art and advocacy to address the crisis of mass incarceration. Dr. Alexander holds a BA from Yale University, an MA from Boston University, and a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and a former co-chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board. In 2019, she received the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University. Among her many other honors, she has been recognized as Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. Elizabeth Alexander is the author of six books of poetry, including American Sublime, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize; two collections of essays; and The Light of the World, her critically acclaimed memoir on love and loss. In 2009, she wrote and delivered her poem “Praise Song for the Day” for President Barack Obama’s first inauguration. Alexander has received many awards, fellowships, and honorary degrees, among them grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. Alexander is also a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Recently, she was named the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Her profile photo is by Alpha Smoot. She is also a founding member of Cave Canem, the influential organization dedicated to nurturing and supporting Black poets and poetry. MORE ABOUT ELIZABETH ALEXANDER Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
