Poet and scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. She grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and earned a BA at Northwestern University, a JD at the University of Michigan, and a PhD in English literature at Duke University.
Shockley’s six books of poetry include suddenly we (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), a recipient of the NAACP Image Award and a National Book Award Finalist; semiautomatic (Wesleyan, 2018), a winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and the new black (Wesleyan, 2012), which won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She also authored the critical monograph Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2011) on the poetry of the Black Arts Movement. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, periodicals, and academic journals.
Among the honors for Shockley’s body of work are the Academy of American Poets Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Henderson Award. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Hedgebrook, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.
Shockley’s joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with artists working in various media. She co-edited the poetry journal jubilat from 2004 to 2007 and has taught at Wake Forest University. She is currently the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
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More Evie Shockley
Text: Read Shockley's poem "On a Global Scale" at The Brooklyn Rail
Video: Shockley reads "les milles" from suddenly we at the National Book Awards Finalist Reading
Text: Read poetry by Shockley at the Academy of American Poets