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Bexley Centennial Author Series

Hanif Abdurraqib & Franny Choi In Conversation

Join us for an evening of inspiration and conversation with two beloved and celebrated poets and authors, Hanif Abdurraqib and Franny Choi, as they discuss life, libraries, and what drives their work.

Join us for an evening of inspiration and conversation with two beloved and celebrated poets and authors, Hanif Abdurraqib and Franny Choi, as they discuss life, libraries, and what drives their work. 

Hanif's latest book, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Penguin Random House, 2024), has been called, "Lyrically stunning and profoundly moving" -- Kirkus Reviews, "An exhilarating, heartfelt, virtuoso, and profound performance" -- Booklist, and, "fat with emotion and love and earnestness and basketball, four of the very best things, packaged and delivered in a way that only Hanif can" -- Shea Serrano, bestselling author of Basketball (and Other Things).

Franny's latest poetry collection, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2022), was named a Time's "100 Must-Read Books of 2022" and Vulture's "10 Best Books of 2022," and has been called, "A collection that will startle readers" -- Library Journal, and, "a luminous, jarring, and gorgeous gift" -- Mariame Kaba, author of the NYT bestseller We Do This Til We Free Us.

Hanif and Franny will be signing books following their conversation. Thank you to Gramercy Books for partnering with us and making onsite books available for purchase. Purchase your books ahead of the program, 10% of online book sales through Gramercy's Centennial Author Series page will be donated to the Bexley Community Author Series Fund at the Bexley Community Foundation. 

Masks are preferred at this event.

About the Authors:

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil In America with Random House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. His next book, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, is due out on March 26, 2024 with Penguin Random House. Hanif is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Franny Choi is a poet and essayist. Their books include The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2022), Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019), and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). Their writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, Princeton’s Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Elgin Award, Franny is Faculty in Literature at Bennington College and the founder of the Brew & Forge writer, artist, and organizer collective. They are at work on an essay collection about Asian robot women, forthcoming from Ecco.

Registration required. Join us in person, or live stream this program on BexleyLibrary.org/TV.

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