Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes is an American poet, born in 1971 in Columbia, South Carolina. He received his B.A. from Coker College, where he was an All-American soccer player, and his M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a professor of English at New York University. His collection Lighthead (2010) won the National Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It demonstrated Hayes's formal inventiveness and his capacity to engage with race, identity, pop culture, and American violence through both playful and devastating verse. His earlier collection Wind in a Box (2006) and later American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018) have also been widely celebrated. Hayes received a MacArthur 'Genius' Fellowship in 2014. He has received the Whiting Award, the United States Artists Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and many other honors. He is considered one of the defining poets of his generation.