Elizabeth Alexander | |
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| Born | (1962-05-30)May 30, 1962 (age 63) Harlem,New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Yale University (BA) Boston University (MA) University of Pennsylvania (PhD) |
| Spouse | Ficre Ghebreyesus (deceased 2012) |
| Children | 2 sons |
| Relatives | Clifford Alexander Jr. (father) Mark C. Alexander (brother) Arthur C. Logan (grandfather) Myra Adele Logan (greataunt) |
Elizabeth Alexander (born May 30, 1962) is an American poet, writer, andliterary scholar who has served as the president of theAndrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018.
Previously, Alexander was a professor for 15 years atYale University, where she taught poetry and chaired theAfrican American studies department. In 2015, she was appointed director of creativity and free expression at theFord Foundation.[1] She then joined the faculty ofColumbia University in 2016, as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature.[2][3][4] In 2022,Time named Alexander one of100 Most Influential People in World.[5]
Alexander was born inHarlem,New York City, and grew up inWashington, D.C. She is the daughter of formerUnited States Secretary of the Army andEqual Employment Opportunity Commission ChairmanClifford Alexander Jr.[6] andAdele Logan Alexander, a professor of African-American women's history atGeorge Washington University and writer.[7]: 9–10 Her brotherMark C. Alexander was a senior adviser to theBarack Obamapresidential campaign and a member of the president-elect's transition team.[6]After she was born, the family moved toWashington, D.C. She was just a toddler when her parents took her in August 1963 to theMarch on Washington site ofMartin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have A Dream" speech. Alexander recalled that "Politics was in the drinking water at my house". She also took ballet as a child.[7]: 10
She graduated fromSidwell Friends School in 1980. From there she went toYale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1984. She studied poetry atBoston University underDerek Walcott and got her master's degree in 1987. Her mother said to her: "That poet you love, Derek Walcott, is teaching at Boston University. Why don't you apply?" Alexander originally entered studying fiction writing, but Walcott looked at her diary and saw the poetry potential. Alexander said, "He gave me a huge gift. He took a cluster of words and he lineated it. And I saw it."[7]: 10
In 1992, she received her PhD in English from theUniversity of Pennsylvania. While she was finishing her degree, she taught at nearbyHaverford College from 1990 to 1991. At this time, she would publish her first work,The Venus Hottentot. The title comes fromSarah Baartman, a 19th-century South African woman of theKhoikhoi ethnic group.[7]: 10–11 [8] Alexander is an alumna of theRagdale Foundation.
While a graduate student, she was a reporter forThe Washington Post from 1984 to 1985.[9] She soon realized that "it wasn't the life I wanted."[7]: 10 She began teaching atUniversity of Chicago in 1991 as an assistant professor of English. Here she would first meet future presidentBarack Obama, who was a senior lecturer at the school's law school from 1992 until his election to theU.S. Senate in 2004. While in Chicago in 1992, she won a creative writing fellowship from theNational Endowment for the Arts.[7]: 11
In 1996, she published a volume of poetry,Body of Life, and a verse play,Diva Studies, which was staged atYale University. She also became a founding faculty member of theCave Canem workshop which helps develop African-American poets. In 1997, she received theUniversity of Chicago'sQuantrell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Later in that year, she moved toMassachusetts to teach atSmith College. She became theGrace Hazard Conkling poet-in-residence and the first director of the college's Poetry Center.[7]: 12 In 2000, she returned toYale University, where she would teach African American studies and English. She also released her third poetry collection,Antebellum Dream Book.[7]: 12 In 2005, she was selected in the first class of AlphonseFletcher Foundation fellows and in 2007–08, she was an academic fellow at theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study atHarvard.[10]
In 2007, Alexander became the first recipient of theJackson Poetry Prize, an annual prize awarded byPoets & Writers that "honors an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition."[11] Since 2008, Alexander has chaired the African American Studies department at Yale University. She currently teachesEnglish language/literature, African-American literature andgender studies at Yale. In 2015, Alexander was elected a Chancellor of theAcademy of American Poets.[12] In 2016, she became the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities atColumbia University.[3][13] She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Yale University in 2018.[14] She was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.[15] In 2020 she was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[16]
Alexander's poems, short stories and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals such as:The Paris Review,American Poetry Review,The Kenyon Review,The Village Voice,Poetry magazine,The Women's Review of Books, andThe Washington Post. Her playDiva Studies, which was performed at theYale School of Drama, garnered her aNational Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as anIllinois Arts Council award.[17]
Her 2005 volume of poetryAmerican Sublime was one of three finalists for thePulitzer Prize of that year.[18] Alexander is also a scholar ofAfrican-American literature andculture and recently published a collection of essays entitledThe Black Interior.[8] Alexander received theAnisfield-Wolf Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry in 2010.[19]
On January 20, 2009, at thepresidential inauguration of Barack Obama, Alexander recited her poem "Praise Song for the Day", which she had composed for the occasion.[6][8] She became only the fourth poet to read at an American presidential inauguration, afterRobert Frost in 1961,Maya Angelou in 1993 andMiller Williams in 1997.[20]
The announcement of her selection was favorably received by her fellow poetsMaya Angelou,Rita Dove,[20]Paul Muldoon,[6] andJay Parini, who extolled her as "smart, deeply educated in the traditions of poetry, true to her roots, responsive to black culture."[18] ThePoetry Foundation also hailed the choice: "Her selection affirms poetry's central place in the soul of our country."[20]
Though the selection of the widely unknown poet, who was a personal friend of Obama, was lauded, the actual poem and delivery were met with a poor reception.[21] theChicago Tribune, theLos Angeles Times Book editor, and most critics found that "her poem was too much like prose," and that "her delivery [was] insufficiently dramatic." Adam Kirsch ofThe New Republic found the poem "dull, 'bureaucratic' and found it proved that 'the poet's place is not on the platform but in the crowd, that she should speak not for the people but to them.'"[22]
Alexander wrote of her experience of reading at the inauguration inThe New Yorker in January 2017. Alexander brought her father, who had attended the 1963March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, to sit next to her at the inauguration. At the rehearsal for the inauguration, Alexander readGwendolyn Brooks's poem "kitchenette building".[23]
Alexander's mother is a member of theLogan family, a part of the oldAfrican-American upper class. Her grandfather was Dr.Arthur C. Logan and her greataunt was Dr.Myra Adele Logan. Alexander was married toFicre Ghebreyesus until his death in April 2012. She lives with their two sons inNew York City.[12] She is a member ofAlpha Kappa Alpha sorority.[24] In 2010, Alexander participated inHenry Louis Gates Jr.'sPBS seriesFaces of America, which explored her ancestry and analyzed herDNA.[25]
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| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected |
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| Early cinema |
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In art, in poetry and in her community of friends and family, Alexander finds divinity. The memoir itself is, of course, art. Its eloquent, grief-struck gratitude draws the reader in, and we celebrate and mourn alongside Alexander.
| External videos | |
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 "Praise Song for the Day", 2009 Presidential Inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander | |
| Keynote Address-Prof. Elizabeth Alexander,IRAAS 20th Anniversary, November 1, 2013 | |
| Keynote- Elizabeth Alexander,Towards an Intellectual History of Black Women Conference, April 29, 2011 |
