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Thorne Hall, ��������

Join us for an evening of conversation between National Book Award winner & former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles Robin Coste Lewis and visual artist and cultural collaborator Alexandra Grant.

�������� Live! is a series of conversations with a wide-ranging lineup of cultural luminaries at the forefront of their fields, joined for thought-provoking discussions hosted by Alexandra Grant. All conversations are open to the public at no cost, creating a space for diverse communities to join in the conversation and explore ideas together.

This event is funded through the generous support of Occidental trustee and alumna, Lisa Coscino ’85; the Occidental Class of '74; and the Antoinette and Vincent M. Dungan Lectureship Fund.

Robin Coste Lewis’s debut poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf) won the National Book Award in poetry––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation's history, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974. The collection was also a finalist for LA Times Book Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award, and the California Book Award. The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Buzz Feed, and Entropy Magazine all named Voyage one of the best poetry collections of the year; Flavorwire named the collection one of the 10 must-read books about art.

Lewis’s writing has appeared in various journals and anthologies, such as Time Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Transition, and Best American Poetry. In 2018, MoMA commissioned both Lewis and Kevin Young to write a series of poems to accompany Robert Rauschenberg’s drawings in Thirty-Four Illustrations of Dante’s Inferno (MoMA, 2018). Knopf published Lewis’s second collection To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness in 2022. Lewis’s latest collection is Archive of Desire.

A former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Lewis’ laureateship focused on truth and reconciliation projects dealing with the city’s history.

In addition to writing essays and poetry, Lewis creates text/art installations and regularly collaborates/contributes on projects with visual artists and filmmakers. Lewis has taught on the faculty of Wheaton College, Hunter College, and Hampshire College. Currently, she teaches in NYU's low-residency MFA in Paris, and is a writer-in-residence at USC.

Born in Compton, California, her family is from New Orleans.