Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975, in Portland, Oregon) is an American poet who is also the poetry editor of the journal Image and an associate professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

McCrae was the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Award, and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award. In 2013, McCrae received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He received a Lannan Literary Award in 2017, in 2018 his collection In the Language of My Captor won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and in 2019 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI.

Early life and education

Born in Portland, Oregon to a white mother and black father, he was kidnapped by his maternal grandparents when he was three years old who raised him to believe that his father had abandoned him. His grandfather was a white supremacist who abused him. He moved to California with his grandparents when he was 10 years old, but he grew up there and in Texas. He did not see his father again until he was 16.

He dropped out of high school, had a child at 18, and later earned a GED. He attended Chemeketa Community College but graduated with a B.A. in 2002 from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. He has earned three graduate degrees: an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in Iowa City (2004), a J.D. from Harvard Law School (2007), and an M.A. from the University of Iowa (2012).

Career

McCrae was an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at Oberlin College from 2015 to 2017 and is an associate professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at Columbia University.

He is the author of the poetry collections Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), Blood (Noemi Press, 2013), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014), The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015), In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017),  The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), and Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023).

Awards

In 2011, McCrae received the Whiting Award, and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a PEN Center USA Literary Award.

The Animal Too Big to Kill won the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award.

In the Language of My Captor was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

McCrae received a Lannan Literary Award in 2018, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.

Sometimes I Never Suffered was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize.

In 2020, McCrae received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

In 2023, McCrae received the Arthur Rense Prize, an award given only every three years for a poet's "exceptional" body of work.

Works

References

  1. 1 2 3 Weisblum, Vida (12 September 2014). "Shane McCrae Debuts Vulnerable Poetry Collection". Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  2. ↑ "Image Journal Staff". imagejournal.org. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
  3. 1 2 3 "This Year's Award Winners | Whiting Writers' Awards | Programs | Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation". Whitingfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 2014-02-20. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  4. 1 2 "Claremont Graduate University News and Events Index". Cgu.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-02-04. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  5. 1 2 "Announcing the 2012 Literary Award Winners". Archived from the original on August 18, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2012.
  6. ↑ "NEA: FY 2013 GRANT AWARDS: Literature Fellowships: Creative Writing (Poetry)". Nea.gov. Archived from the original on 2013-09-02. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  7. 1 2 Shane McCrae 2017 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, lannan.org. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  8. 1 2 Evone Jeffries, 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Are Announced, Ohio Center for the Book, March 30, 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  9. 1 2 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, gf.org. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Gibson, Lydialyle (2018-10-16). "Coming Apart Together". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
  11. 1 2 "User account – Graduate College of The University of Iowa". Grad.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  12. 1 2 "Shane McCrae". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  13. ↑ "Linfield grad lands one of the country's top writing awards". Linfield.edu. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  14. 1 2 3 "Shane McCrae – Arts and Sciences – Oberlin College". oberlin.edu. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
  15. ↑ Shane McCrae Assistant Professor at Oberlin College — Creative Writing, Oberlin College & Conservatory. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  16. ↑ "Full-time faculty; Columbia University". arts.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
  17. ↑ "Poetry Center || Cleveland State University". Csuohio.edu. Archived from the original on 2013-08-03. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  18. ↑ "In the Language of My Captor".
  19. ↑ "Cain Named the Animal". Archived from the original on 2023-04-04. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
  20. ↑ McCrae, Shane (August 2023). Pulling the Chariot of the Sun. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-6680-2174-3.
  21. ↑ Persea Books, perseabooks.com. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  22. ↑ The T. S. Eliot Foundation, tseliot.com. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
  23. ↑ New York Foundation for the Arts, nyfa.org. Retrieved 18 April 2021.