Elizabeth Alexander
Photo: Slowking4, GFDL 1.2, via Wikimedia Commons23

Elizabeth Alexander

American poet (born 1962)

Elizabeth Alexander (born May 30, 1962) is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Elizabeth Alexander (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born May 30, 1962.1

About

Previously, Alexander was a professor for 15 years at Yale University, where she taught poetry and chaired the African American studies department. In 2015, she was appointed director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation. She then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2016, as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. In 2022, Time named Alexander one of 100 Most Influential People in World.

From Wikipedia’s article on Elizabeth Alexander, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Early life and education

  • 1984Yale University Bachelor of Science3 4
  • 1987Boston University master's degree3 4
  • 1992University of Pennsylvania Doctor of Philosophy3 4
  • Date not recordedSidwell Friends School3

Alexander was born in Harlem, New York City, and grew up in Washington, D.C. She is the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman Clifford Alexander Jr. and Adele Logan Alexander, a professor of African-American women's history at George Washington University and writer. Her brother Mark C. Alexander was a senior adviser to the Barack Obama presidential campaign and a member of the president-elect's transition team.

After she was born, the family moved to Washington, D.C. She was just a toddler when her parents took her in August 1963 to the March on Washington site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have A Dream" speech. Alexander recalled that "Politics was in the drinking water at my house". She also took ballet as a child.

She graduated from Sidwell Friends School in 1980. From there she went to Yale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1984. She studied poetry at Boston University under Derek Walcott and got her master's degree in 1987. Her mother said to her: "That poet you love, Derek Walcott, is teaching at Boston University. Why don't you apply?" Alexander originally entered studying fiction writing, but Walcott looked at her diary and saw the poetry potential. Alexander said, "He gave me a huge gift. He took a cluster of words and he lineated it. And I saw it."

In 1992, she received her PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. While she was finishing her degree, she taught at nearby Haverford College from 1990 to 1991. At this time, she would publish her first work, The Venus Hottentot. The title comes from Sarah Baartman, a 19th-century South African woman of the Khoikhoi ethnic group. Alexander is an alumna of the Ragdale Foundation.

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Academic career

While a graduate student, she was a reporter for The Washington Post from 1984 to 1985. She soon realized that "it wasn't the life I wanted." She began teaching at University of Chicago in 1991 as an assistant professor of English. Here she would first meet future president Barack Obama, who was a senior lecturer at the school's law school from 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004. While in Chicago in 1992, she won a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1996, she published a volume of poetry, Body of Life, and a verse play, Diva Studies, which was staged at Yale University. She also became a founding faculty member of the Cave Canem workshop which helps develop African-American poets. In 1997, she received the University of Chicago's Quantrell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Later in that year, she moved to Massachusetts to teach at Smith College. She became the Grace Hazard Conkling poet-in-residence and the first director of the college's Poetry Center. In 2000, she returned to Yale University, where she would teach African American studies and English. She also released her third poetry collection, Antebellum Dream Book. In 2005, she was selected in the first class of Alphonse Fletcher Foundation fellows and in 2007–08, she was an academic fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

In 2007, Alexander became the first recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, an annual prize awarded by Poets & Writers that "honors an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition." Since 2008, Alexander has chaired the African American Studies department at Yale University. She currently teaches English language/literature, African-American literature and gender studies at Yale. In 2015, Alexander was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2016, she became the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Yale University in 2018. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. In 2020 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

From Wikipedia’s article on Elizabeth Alexander (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: poet, teacher, university teacher, docent, academic, playwright, essayist, writer.10

Known for: Praise Song for the Day.4 11

Critical studies and reviews of Alexander's work

Anon. (April 11, 2015). "How to remember". Books and Arts. The Economist. Vol. 415, no. 8933. pp. 75–76. Review of The Light of the World.

Gollin, Andrea (May 1, 2015). "Review: Elizabeth Alexander's 'The Light of the World'". Miami Herald. Retrieved May 3, 2015. In art, in poetry and in her community of friends and family, Alexander finds divinity. The memoir itself is, of course, art. Its eloquent, grief-struck gratitude draws the reader in, and we celebrate and mourn alongside Alexander.

From Wikipedia’s article on Elizabeth Alexander (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • BornMay 30, 1962, Harlem4 12
  • CitizenshipUnited States13
  • ResidenceNew York City, Chicago14

Alexander's mother is a member of the Logan family, a part of the old African-American upper class. Her grandfather was Dr. Arthur C. Logan and her greataunt was Dr. Myra Adele Logan. Alexander was married to Ficre Ghebreyesus until his death in April 2012. She lives with their two sons in New York City. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. In 2010, Alexander participated in Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s PBS series Faces of America, which explored her ancestry and analyzed her DNA.

From Wikipedia’s article on Elizabeth Alexander (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Awards

  • 2022Time 10015 17
  • 2021honorary degree from Spelman College15 16
  • 2010Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards15
  • 2002Guggenheim Fellowship15

Sources

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