We are thrilled to welcome Terrance Hayes, National Book Award winner and International Poetry Forum alum, in his long awaited return to Pittsburgh. This event marks the relaunch of the International Poetry Forum, a nonprofit organization that originally hosted over 800 poets, actors, and artists in Pittsburgh from 1966 to 2009. The 501(c)(3) was founded by and directed for 43 years by Samuel Hazo, inaugural state poet of Pennsylvania. The reading will be followed by a book signing, where attendees can bring their favorite of Terrance’s seven published poetry collections to get them signed.

Alumni of the International Poetry Forum represent more than 50 countries and include nine Nobel laureates, 14 Academy Award recipients, 28 U.S. Poets Laureate, 39 National Book Award winners, and 47 Pulitzer Prize winners—as well as a Princess, a Queen, and a Steelers Super Bowl MVP.

Past participants include figures such as Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Elizabeth Bishop, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Chinua Achebe, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, Anthony Hopkins, Danny Glover, Grace Kelly, James Earl Jones, and Queen Noor of Jordan. Complete information on past performers and the organization’s history is available on the International Poetry Forum’s website and Instagram.

You can purchase your own copy of Terrance’s many works at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Terrance Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections: So to Speak; American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and TS Eliot Prize; How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. His prose collection, To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. Hayes has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Whiting Foundation, and is a professor of English at New York University.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant Cucina Alfabeto will be closed.