Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975, Portland, Oregon)[1] is an American poet, and is currently Poetry Editor of Image.[2]

McCrae was the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Award,[3] and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award[4] and a PEN Center USA Literary Award.[5] In 2013, McCrae received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.[6] He received a Lannan Literary Award[7] in 2017, in 2018 his collection In the Language of My Captor won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award,[8] and in 2019 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[9]

His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI.[3]

Early life and education

Born in Portland, Oregon to a white mother and black father, he was kidnapped by his maternal grandparents when he was three years old and raised him to believe that his father had abandoned him.[10] His grandfather was a white supremacist who abused him.[10] They moved to California when he was 10 years old,[1][11] and he grew up in Texas and California.[12] He did not see his father again until he was 16.[10]

He dropped out of high school and later earned a GED certificate and had a child at 18.[11][10] He attended Chemeketa Community College.[1] In 2002, McCrae graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.[13] In 2004, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.[14] In 2007, he graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD.[14][12] In 2012, he earned a Master of Arts from the University of Iowa.[14]

Career

McCrae was an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at Oberlin College 2015–2017[15] and is an associate professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at Columbia University.[16]

He is the author of the poetry collections Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011),[17] Blood (Noemi Press, 2013), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014), The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015), In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017),[18]  The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022),[19] and Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023).[20]

Awards

In 2011, McCrae received the Whiting Award,[3] and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award[4] and a PEN Center USA Literary Award.[5]

The Animal Too Big to Kill won the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award.[21]

In the Language of My Captor was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.[8]

McCrae received a Lannan Literary Award[7] in 2018, and a Guggenheim Fellowship[9] in 2019.

Sometimes I Never Suffered was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize.[22]

In 2020, McCrae received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.[23]

Works

  • In Canaan, Milwaukee: Rescue Press, 2010. ISBN 9780984488919, OCLC 707718211
  • Mule, Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011. ISBN 9781880834930, OCLC 732166609
  • Blood, Noemi Press, 2013. ISBN 9781934819302, OCLC 931029174
  • Nonfiction, Pittsburgh, PA: Black Lawrence Press, 2014. ISBN 9781937854980, OCLC 833301672
  • Forgiveness Forgiveness, Hadley, MA: Factory Hollow Press, 2014. ISBN 9780983520313, OCLC 890624391
  • The Animal Too Big to Kill, New York: Persea Books, 2015. ISBN 9780892554645, OCLC 913514526
  • In the Language of My Captor Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017. ISBN 9780819577115, OCLC 1018464460
  • The Gilded Auction Block, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. ISBN 9780374162252, OCLC 1035365132
  • Sometimes I Never Suffered, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. ISBN 9780374240813, OCLC 1182576051
  • Cain Named the Animal, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. ISBN 9780374602857, OCLC 1246143402
  • Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping, New York: Scribner, 2023. ISBN 9781668021743, OCLC 1390879054
  • The Many Hundreds of the Scent: Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. ISBN 9780374607197, OCLC 1344332594

References

  1. ^ a b c Weisblum, Vida (12 September 2014). "Shane McCrae Debuts Vulnerable Poetry Collection". Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  2. ^ "Image Journal Staff". imagejournal.org. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
  3. ^ a b c "This Year's Award Winners | Whiting Writers' Awards | Programs | Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation". Whitingfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 2014-02-20. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  4. ^ a b "Claremont Graduate University News and Events Index". Cgu.edu. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  5. ^ a b "Announcing the 2012 Literary Award Winners". Archived from the original on August 18, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
  6. ^ "NEA: FY 2013 GRANT AWARDS: Literature Fellowships: Creative Writing (Poetry)". Nea.gov. Archived from the original on 2013-09-02. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  7. ^ a b Shane McCrae 2017 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, lannan.org. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  8. ^ a b Evone Jeffries, 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Are Announced, Ohio Center for the Book, March 30, 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  9. ^ a b John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, gf.org. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  10. ^ a b c d Gibson, Lydialyle (2018-10-16). "Coming Apart Together". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
  11. ^ a b "User account – Graduate College of The University of Iowa". Grad.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  12. ^ a b "Shane McCrae". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  13. ^ "Linfield grad lands one of the country's top writing awards". Linfield.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  14. ^ a b c "Shane McCrae – Arts and Sciences – Oberlin College". oberlin.edu. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  15. ^ Shane McCrae Assistant Professor at Oberlin College — Creative Writing, Oberlin College & Conservatory. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  16. ^ "Full-time faculty; Columbia University". arts.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  17. ^ "Poetry Center || Cleveland State University". Csuohio.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-08-03. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  18. ^ "In the Language of My Captor".
  19. ^ https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602857/cainnamedtheanimal [bare URL]
  20. ^ McCrae, Shane (August 2023). Pulling the Chariot of the Sun. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-6680-2174-3.
  21. ^ Persea Books, perseabooks.com. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  22. ^ The T. S. Eliot Foundation, tseliot.com. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
  23. ^ New York Foundation for the Arts, nyfa.org. Retrieved 18 April 2021.