This just in from Beth Loffreda, director of the MFA creative writing program at UW in Laramie:
The eminent writer in poetry next year will be Claudia Rankine, who will teach a five-week workshop next September.
Claudia Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf, 2004), PLOT (Grove/Atlantic, 2001); The End Of The Alphabet (Grove/Atlantic, 1998), and Nothing in Nature is Private (Cleveland State University Poetry Press, 1995). She is also co-editor of American Women Poets in the Twenty-First Century: Where Lyric Meets Language and American Poets in the Twenty-First Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press). A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poetry, the National Endowments for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation, she is the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College. Of her most recent book Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, an experimental multi-genre project that blends poetry, essays, and images, poet Robert Creeley said: “It’s a master work in every sense, and altogether her own.”
She’s also been commissioned to write a play this year, and has been making short films—so the multi-genre work is ongoing.