WWBA announces the 2018 Poet-in-Residence

The Island Now

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association named Vijay Seshadri as the 2018 Poet-in-Residence.

A poet, essayist and critic, Seshadri was born in Bangalore, India, and came to the U.S. at the age of five.  He earned a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.F.A from Columbia University.

Seshadri’s experience as a biologist formed the basis of his first collection of poems, “Wild Kingdom” (1996).  His second collection, “The Long Meadow,” won the James Laughlin Award, and his third, “3 Sections” (2013), won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Seshadri has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the NEA, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been awarded The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Long Poem Prize and the MacDowell Colony’s Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement.

Currently, he teaches undergraduate writing courses at Sarah Lawrence College, as well as directs the graduate, non-fiction writing program.  He lives in Brooklyn.

Under his new role, Seshadri will offer a Master Class in Poetry Writing, followed by a poetry reading on Saturday, June 2, and officiate the annual WWBA Birthday Celebration on Sunday, June 3.

For further information, visit www.waltwhitman.org.

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