John Keene
February 11–12, 2019
- Reading: Streaming video, MP3 audio
- Discussion: Streaming video, MP3 audio
Bio
John R. Keene, born in St. Louis in 1965,
is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, translator, and professor best known for his fictions,
Annotations (1995, New Directions) and Counternarratives (2015, New Directions). The latter book received
an American Book Award. Keene received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College, and
an MFA from New York University, where he was a New York Times
Fellow. In 1989, Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and has been a Graduate
Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of the poetry collection
Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a
translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a
Seducer. Keene received a 2005 Whiting Writers Award for fiction and poetry. He
has had his work published in a wide array of journals, including African-American Review, AGNI, Encyclopedia, Gay and Lesbian Review,
Hambone, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, Mandorla, Ploughshares, and Public Space. He
teaches at Rutgers-Newark where he is an Associate Professor of English, chair of the
Department of African American and African studies. He also teaches in the MFA program
in Creative Writing. John Keene is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow.