Award-Winning Author and Teacher of Creative Writing

Lecture Theme: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

Camille Dungy is author of Suck on the Marrow and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison, a finalist for the PEN Center USA 2007 Literary Award and the Library of Virginia 2007 Literary Award.

She is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, coeditor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade.

Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers, such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, Nikki Giovanni, and Melvin B. Tolson, as well as newer talents, such as Douglas Kearney, Amber Flora Thomas, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington.

Dungy has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Cave Canem, the Dana Award, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Once the 'Writer-in-Residence' at Rocky Mountain National Park, Dungy also has been awarded fellowships and residencies by The Corporation of Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Norton Island/Eastern Frontier Society, and the Ragdale Foundation.