Professor Francis Selected to Judge a PEN Book Award

PEN America's 2021 Literary Awards judges, including Professor Francis, join a long tradition of esteemed writers and PEN America members committed to recognizing their contemporaries, from promising debut writers to those who have had a continuous, lasting impact on literary excellence. The PEN/Jean Stein Award, which Professor Francis will be judging with Fred Moten and Tommy Orange, is awarded to the author of a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, and that has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.

Professor Francis is the author of three books of poetry: Blue-Tail Fly, Horse in the Dark (winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection), and Forest Primeval (winner of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award and the 2017 Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, among others. She serves as an associate editor of Callaloo and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing here at Dartmouth.