Author Derrick Austin discusses his Isabella Gardner Award-winning book, Tenderness. The poems in this book examine the fraught nature of intimacy in a nation poisoned by anti-Blackness and homophobia. Austin will be in discussion with Keith Wilson.

Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and Golden Poppy Award nominee and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His debut collection was honored as a finalist for the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the 2017 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the 2017 Norma Faber First Book Award. His first chapbook, Black Sand, will be released by Foundlings Press in February 2022.

Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House and the MacDowell Colony, among others. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry.

This event is a partnership with the Museum of African Diaspora. 

Connect:

Derrick Austin - Linktree | Derrick Austin - Twitter | Derrick Austin - Instagram

Keith Wilson - Website | Keith Wilson - Twitter | Keith Wilson - Instagram