Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975, Portland, Oregon) is an American poet, and is currently Poetry Editor of Image.
McCrae was the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Award, and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award. In 2013, McCrae received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He received a Lannan Literary Award in 2017, in 2018 his collection In the Language of My Captor won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and in 2019 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI.
Early life and education
Born in Portland, Oregon to a white mother and black father, he was kidnapped by his maternal grandparents when he was three years old and raised him to believe that his father had abandoned him. His grandfather was a white supremacist who abused him. They moved to California when he was 10 years old, and he grew up in Texas and California. He did not see his father again until he was 16.
He dropped out of high school and later earned a GED certificate and had a child at 18. He attended Chemeketa Community College. In 2002, McCrae graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. In 2004, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. In 2007, he graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD. In 2012, he earned a Master of Arts from the University of Iowa.
Career
McCrae was an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at Oberlin College 2015–2017 and is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at Columbia University.
He is the author of the poetry collections Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), Blood (Noemi Press, 2013), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014), The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015), In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), and Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023).
Awards
In 2011, McCrae received the Whiting Award, and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award.
The Animal Too Big to Kill won the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award.
In the Language of My Captor was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
McCrae received a Lannan Literary Award in 2018, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.
Sometimes I Never Suffered was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize.
In 2020, McCrae received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.
Works
- In Canaan, Milwaukee: Rescue Press, 2010. ISBN 9780984488919, OCLC 707718211
- Mule, Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011. ISBN 9781880834930, OCLC 732166609
- Blood, Noemi Press, 2013. ISBN 9781934819302, OCLC 931029174
- Nonfiction, Pittsburgh, PA: Black Lawrence Press, 2014. ISBN 9781937854980, OCLC 833301672
- Forgiveness Forgiveness, Hadley, MA: Factory Hollow Press, 2014. ISBN 9780983520313, OCLC 890624391
- The Animal Too Big to Kill, New York: Persea Books, 2015. ISBN 9780892554645, OCLC 913514526
- In the Language of My Captor Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017. ISBN 9780819577115, OCLC 1018464460
- The Gilded Auction Block, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. ISBN 9780374162252, OCLC 1035365132
- Sometimes I Never Suffered, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. ISBN 9780374240813, OCLC 1182576051
- Cain Named the Animal, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. ISBN 9780374602857, OCLC 1246143402
- Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping, New York: Scribner, 2023. ISBN 9781668021743, OCLC 1390879054
- The Many Hundreds of the Scent: Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. ISBN 9780374607197, OCLC 1344332594
References
- ^ Weisblum, Vida (12 September 2014). "Shane McCrae Debuts Vulnerable Poetry Collection". Retrieved 10 July 2016.
- "Image Journal Staff". imagejournal.org. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
- ^ "This Year's Award Winners | Whiting Writers' Awards | Programs | Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation". Whitingfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 2014-02-20. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
- ^ "Claremont Graduate University News and Events Index". Cgu.edu. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
- ^ "Announcing the 2012 Literary Award Winners". Archived from the original on August 18, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
- "NEA: FY 2013 GRANT AWARDS: Literature Fellowships: Creative Writing (Poetry)". Nea.gov. Archived from the original on 2013-09-02. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
- ^ Shane McCrae 2017 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, lannan.org. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
- ^ Evone Jeffries, 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Are Announced, Ohio Center for the Book, March 30, 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- ^ John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, gf.org. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
- ^ Gibson, Lydialyle (2018-10-16). "Coming Apart Together". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
- ^ "User account – Graduate College of The University of Iowa". Grad.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
- ^ "Shane McCrae". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
- "Linfield grad lands one of the country's top writing awards". Linfield.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
- ^ "Shane McCrae – Arts and Sciences – Oberlin College". oberlin.edu. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
- Shane McCrae Assistant Professor at Oberlin College — Creative Writing, Oberlin College & Conservatory. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
- "Full-time faculty; Columbia University". arts.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
- "Poetry Center || Cleveland State University". Csuohio.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-08-03. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
- "In the Language of My Captor".
- https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374602857/cainnamedtheanimal
- McCrae, Shane (August 2023). Pulling the Chariot of the Sun. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-6680-2174-3.
- Persea Books, perseabooks.com. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
- The T. S. Eliot Foundation, tseliot.com. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
- New York Foundation for the Arts, nyfa.org. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
External links
- McCrae's Whiting Award Profile
- McCrae's Profile on The Cleveland State University Poetry Center Website
- McCrae on First Book Interviews Website
- Living people
- 1975 births
- American male poets
- Poets from Oregon
- Writers from Portland, Oregon
- People from McMinnville, Oregon
- Linfield University alumni
- Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni
- University of Iowa alumni
- Harvard Law School alumni
- Oberlin College faculty
- Spalding University faculty
- 21st-century American poets
- 21st-century American male writers
- Columbia University faculty