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Camille Rankine is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, York Institute for the Humanities, The Hawthornden Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, was published by Copper Canyon Press. She is also the author of the chapbook Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America's New York Chapbook Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nation, The Baffler, The Believer, Boston Review, Tin House, Poetry, The Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, jubliat, Poem-a-Day, American Poet, A Public Space, and elsewhere, along with several anthologies, including Please Excuse this Poem (Viking), African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (Penguin Random House), and A House Called Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Poetry (Copper Canyon Press). Her essays have been published by Copper Nickel, Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Foundation, and Nat. Brut, and will appear in the book Black Poets on Craft, forthcoming from Knopf.

The recipient of a Discovery Poetry Prize, Camille was featured as an emerging poet in O, The Oprah Magazine and as one of Brooklyn Magazine's top 100 cultural influencers, and was named an Honorary Fellow by Cave Canem Foundation, where she was also the Manager of External Relations & National Programs. She has served as a judge for the National Poetry Series and the PEN Open Book Award, as well as for grants and poetry prizes from The Academy of American Poets, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Poet's House, Indiana Review, Boston Review, and elsewhere. In her many roles as a literary administator and advocate, she has work with numerous authors including Natasha Trethewey, Claudia Rankine, Tracy K. Smith, Kaveh Akbar, Ben Lerner, Ada Limón, Rita Dove, Ocean Vuong, Jericho Brown, Danez Smith, Eileen Myles, Cheryl Strayed, Ross Gay, and Terrance Hayes.

Camille has collaborated with artists in other disciplines, including Irish photographer and filmmaker Matthew Thompson for the 92Y's #wordswelivein film series, and musicians David Cieri and Mike Brown for the Gavagai music + reading series; the jazz trio Thumbscrew for City of Asylum's Jazz Poetry Festival; and Chris Thile, Brad Mehldau, and Tune-Yards for the New York Philharmonic's 65th Street Session at Lincoln Center.

A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University's School of the Arts, Camille has taught at Columbia, Brown, NYU, UMASS Amherst, and The New School, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. She served as host for the premier season of the podcast The Glimpse, and serves as co-chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council.

Contact: camille@camillerankine.com.

 

Camille Rankine is the author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses, published by Copper Canyon Press, and the chapbook Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America's New York Chapbook Fellowship. She is the recipient of a Discovery Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Hawthornden Foundation, and MacDowell. She serves as co-chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council, and is an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

 

“Fierce, beautiful, urgent, necessary. Dangerous stuff...This voice is news.”
    —A Voice to Be Reckoned With: Cornelius Eady on Camille Rankine, American Poet

“Camille Rankine says she never expects anything. But perhaps she should.”
    —Welcome to It: Profile by Kimberly Reyes for the Poetry Foundation