Shane McCrae, an assistant professor of writing in the School of the Arts at Columbia University in New York City, has been selected as the winner of the 83rd Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, presented by the Cleveland Foundation. The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize works that make important contributions to our understanding of racism and cultural diversity. McCrae will be honored at the State Theater in Cleveland on September 27.
McCrae was honored for his poetry collection In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017). Earlier collections include Mule (2001), Blood (2013) and The Animal Too Big to Kill (2015).
McCrae joined the faculty at Columbia University in 2017 after teaching for three years at Oberlin College in Ohio. He is a graduate of Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. He holds a master’s degree and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Iowa and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School.