Major Jackson // ©Marion Ettlinger
For our first writer of the season, we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be welcoming into the studio Major Jackson, whose books of poems are Hoops (2006, Norton) and Leaving Saturn (2002, University of Georgia Press).
Listen to the show.
Jackson has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, and other literary magazines. Hoops was selected as a finalist for a NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, and Leaving Saturn was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.
His third volume of poetry, Holding Company, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.
Jackson earned a B.A. from Temple University and an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon. He has worked as the curator of literary arts at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia and the Mountain Writers’ Center in Portland, and has taught at Columbia University, Xavier University of Louisiana, New York University, and University of Massachusetts – Lowell as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence.
Today, he lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Associate Professor at University of Vermont. He also serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.
A video:
Major doesn’t read this poem on this particular show, but I love it and the video so much that I’ll post it anyway.
