The Central Wisconsin Book Festival is thrilled that poet, essayist and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib will join us for one of our festival's headline events!
Abdurraqib, who hails from Columbus, Ohio, will read from his newest collection of poetry, "A Fortune for Your Disaster," which will be published in September from Tin House.
According to Tin House, the book is "about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to 'Don't Stop Believin'. It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside—from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs—to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility." A Q&A and book signing will follow the reading.
Abdurraqib's first poetry collection, "The Crown Ain't Worth Much," was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His collection of essays, "They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us," was named a book of 2017 by BuzzFeed, Esquire, NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Pitchfork among others. His most recent book is the New York Times bestseller "Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest." He is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow, a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine, and a member of the poetry collective Echo Hotel with poet/essayist Eve Ewing.