Visiting Writers Series to begin with Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner

Northwest Missouri State University’s 2026-27 Visiting Writers Series begins this month with a critically acclaimed poet whose work grapples with the story of his own childhood kidnapping, race and memory.

Shane McCrae will present his work from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, in Novel Grounds at the B.D. Owens Library. The event is free and open to the public.

“Shane McCrae is a wizard, a seer and a song-and-dance man,” Daniel Biegelson, the series director and a senior instructor of English, said. “He mines and marshals the resources of poetry to uncover the histories haunting the present, revealing the tornadic, disorienting way in which the past lives in us and how we in the present continually remake the past. His approach is exacting and generous. I can’t think of another poet whose work speaks more directly to the mysteries, injustices, insanities, fierceness, and tenderness of our world.”

McCrae’s most recent collection of poetry, “Two Appearances After the Resurrection,” was published in March. His second, “In the Language of my Captor,” was published in 2017 and was the winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. His 2023 memoir, “Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of Kidnapping,” was named Vulture’s No. 1 memoir of 2023 and recounts his abduction as a child by his white supremacist grandparents.

His collections also include “Mule” (2011), “Blood” (2013), “Forgiveness Forgiveness” (2014), “The Animal Too Big to Kill” (2015), “The Gilded Auction Block” (2019), “Sometimes I Never Suffered” (2020), which won the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, and “New and Collected Hell” (2025).

McCrae is also a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry, The American Poetry Review and Gulf Coast.

McCrae resides in New York City and is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Linfield College, master’s degree from the University of Iowa and a juris doctor degree from Harvard University.

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to enrich Northwest’s educational mission while promoting the values of community, civil discourse and self-expression. Northwest’s Green Tower Press and the School of Language, Literature and Writing sponsor the series.

For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Biegelson at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 660.562.1266.