Booking and details
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Dates Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 7:30pm
Venue Folger Theatre
Tickets $20
Duration 60 minutes
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
Join Folger Poetry in honoring the legacy of former Folger Shakespeare Library Director O.B. Hardison, Jr. with acclaimed poet Cornelius Eady (Pulitzer Prize–nominated The Gathering of My Name; National Book Award finalist for Brutal Imagination).
He is a recipient of the 2023 Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry and co-founder of Cave Canem, a non-profit literary organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of Black poets. Eady’s poetry centers the everyday experiences of Black Americans through his signature jazz and blues-inflected verse.
Can’t join us in person? Purchase virtual access to a live streaming of the reading.
About the poet
Cornelius Eady
Cornelius Eady was born in 1954 in Rochester, New York. He is the author of several books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Hardheaded Weather (Penguin, 2008), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. His other titles are Kartunes (Warthog Press, 1980); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; You Don’t Miss Your Water (Henry Holt and Co., 1995); The Autobiography of a Jukebox (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1997); Brutal Imagination (Putnam, 2001); the mixed media book/cds Book of Hooks (Kattywompus Press, 2013); Singing While Black (Kattywompus Press, 2015), and The War Against the Obvious (Jacar Press, 2018). His work appears in many journals, magazines, and the anthologies Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep, In Search of Color Everywhere, and The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry, (1750-2000) ed. Michael S. Harper.