Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Last updated
Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Lady Rushdie
Rachel Eliza Griffiths 2023 Texas Book Festival.jpg
Griffiths at the 2023 Texas Book Festival
Born1978 (age 44–45)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Education University of Delaware
Sarah Lawrence College (MFA)
Occupation(s)Poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist
Spouse
​
(m. 2021)​
Website www.rachelelizagriffiths.com

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Lady Rushdie (born 1978) [1] [2] is an American poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist, who is the author of five published collections of poems. In Seeing the Body (2020), she "pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth." [3] It was a nominee for the 2021 NAACP Image Award in Poetry. [4]

Contents

Biography

Born in Washington, D.C., [5] she was the eldest of four children of Michele Antoinette Pray-Griffiths and Norman Dwight Griffiths. [6] Her father was an environmental lawyer, her mother a community organiser and former police officer. [7] [8] [9] Rachel Eliza Griffiths graduated from St. Mark's High School and the University of Delaware, where she earned her undergraduate degree and her first master's degree. [10] She received the MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She has been awarded several fellowships, including from Cave Canem Foundation, Kimbilio, Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo. [11]

Among the many journals, periodicals and other outlets in which Griffiths has been published are The New Yorker , The Paris Review , The New York Times , Virginia Quarterly Review , The Progressive , The Georgia Review , Gulf Coast , Callaloo , Poets & Writers , American Poetry Review , Los Angeles Review of Books , Guernica , The Writer's Chronicle , Transition , American Poet , Mosaic, Indiana Review , and Ecotone Magazine . [12]

In 2011, she featured in the first poetry issue of Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine . [13]

Griffiths was the creator of the series of video interview Poets on Poetry (P.O.P), [14] in which contemporary poets discuss poetry "in relation to individual human experience and culture". [15]

Speaking in 2015 about working in a variety of genres, she said: "I like the fluidity each genre offers me spatially, emotionally, and creatively. I can take an idea, word/fragment, or image and open it up across forms." [16]

She is the author of five collections of poems: Miracle Arrhythmia (2010), The Requited Distance (2011), Mule & Pear (2011), Lighting the Shadow (2015), and Seeing the Body (2020). In Seeing the Body, Griffiths uses photography as well as poetry to tell the story of her mother's death in 2014 and, as described by Guernica magazine, "brings together poetry and photography to powerful effect, providing the reader with an experience that’s both visually and emotionally arresting". [17] For the Los Angeles Review of Books , "The result is a radiant and soulful collection." [3] Seeing the Body was selected as one of NPR's Best Books of 2020, [18] and was a nominee for the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry. [19] Seeing the Body won the 2021 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, [20] and was also the winner of the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize awarded by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. [21]

Anthologies in which work by Griffiths has appeared include Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (edited by Camille T. Dungy, 2009), [22] New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby (2019), [23] and The Best American Poetry 2021 (edited by Tracy K. Smith). [24]

Griffiths was chosen as poet-in-residence for 2020 at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. [25]

In February 2021, Griffiths was guest editor for the Academy of American Poets initiative Poem-a-Day. [26]

Her 2023 debut novel, Promise, was published by Random House in the US, [27] [28] and John Murray in the UK. [29] It was described in Kirkus Reviews as a "stunning and evocative portrait of love, pride, and survival". [30] The Times' reviewer said "Promise is by turns enchanting and enraging, and it left me emotionally shattered." [31]

Personal life

As of 2021, Griffiths lives in New York City. [12] [32]

In 2021, she married Indian-born, British-American novelist Sir Salman Rushdie. [33]

Bibliography

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Walker</span> American author and activist (born 1944)

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Pinsky</span> American poet, editor, literary critic, academic

Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. His first two terms as United States Poet Laureate were marked by such visible dynamism—and such national enthusiasm in response—that the Library of Congress appointed him to an unprecedented third term. Throughout his career, Pinsky has been dedicated to identifying and invigorating poetry's place in the world. Known worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned him the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize, Italy's Premio Capri, the Korean Manhae Award, and the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago, among other accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Glück</span> American poet and Nobel laureate (1943–2023)

Louise Elisabeth Glück was an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rita Dove</span> American poet and author (born 1952)

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helene Johnson</span> American poet

Helene Johnson was an African-American poet during the Harlem Renaissance. Though her career as a poet was relatively short-lived, she is remembered today for her poetry that captures both the challenges and the excitement of this era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudia Rankine</span> American poet, essayist, and playwright (born 1963)

Claudia Rankine is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracy K. Smith</span> American poet

Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published five collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathalie Handal</span> American writer

Nathalie Handal is a French-American poet, writer and professor, described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” A New Yorker and a quintessential global citizen, she has published 10 prize-winning books, including Life in a Country Album. She is praised for her “diverse, and innovative body of work.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joy Harjo</span> American Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliza Griswold</span> American writer

Eliza Griswold is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and poet. Griswold is currently a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. She is the author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, a 2018 New York Times Notable Book and a Times Critics’ Pick, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Ridenhour Book Prize in 2019. Griswold was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a former Nieman Fellow and a current Berggruen Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, and has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Roberts (poet)</span> American poet

Kim Roberts is an American poet, editor, and literary historian who lives in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jericho Brown</span> American poet and professor (born 1976)

Jericho Brown is an American poet and writer. Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Brown has worked as an educator at institutions such as University of Houston, University of San Diego, and Emory University. His poems have been published in The Nation, New England Review, The New Republic, Oxford American, and The New Yorker, among others. He released his first book of prose and poetry, Please, in 2008. His second book, The New Testament, was released in 2014. His 2019 collection of poems, The Tradition, garnered widespread critical acclaim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Rose</span> Canadian/American poet, essayist and short story writer

Rachel Rose is a Canadian/American poet, essayist and short story writer. She has published three collections of poetry, Giving My Body to Science, Notes on Arrival and Departure, and Song and Spectacle. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Hyesoon</span> South Korean poet

Kim Hyesoon (Korean: 김혜순) is a South Korean poet.

Born in 1961, Diane Raptosh is an American poet of Sicilian/American descent who became the first poet laureate for Boise, Idaho, in 2013, a position that was eliminated after her tenure. A self-described "noted author, poet and educator," “highly active ambassador for poetry,” and “cutting-edge advocate,” Raptosh grew up in Idaho and attended the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, earning a BA in literature and modern languages. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, returning to teach undergraduates at the College of Idaho in 1990. She is the mother of Keats Conley, whose first book, Guidance from the Gods of Seahorses, was a finalist for the Wandering Aengus award and was published by Green Writers Press in 2021. Both mother and daughter use alliteration, assonance, and puns to craft whimsical poems.

Warsan Shire is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize, chosen from a shortlist of six candidates out of a total 655 entries. Her words "No one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark", from the poem "Conversations about Home ", have been called "a rallying call for refugees and their advocates".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocean Vuong</span> American writer

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. Vuong is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Coste Lewis</span> American poet

Robin Coste Lewis is an American poet, artist, and scholar. She is known primarily for her debut poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2015––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation's history, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974. Critics called the collection “A masterpiece…” “Surpassing imagination, maturity, and aesthetic dazzle…” “remarkable hopefulness…in the face of what would make most rage and/or collapse...” “formally polished, emotionally raw, and wholly exquisite." Voyage of the Sable Venus was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award, and the California Book Award. The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Buzz Feed, and Entropy Magazine all named Voyage one of the best poetry collections of the year. Flavorwire named the collection one of the 10 must-read books about art. And Literary Hub named Voyage one of the “Most Important Books of the Last Twenty Years.” In 2018, MoMA commissioned both Lewis and Kevin Young to write a series of poems to accompany Robert Rauschenberg’s drawings in the book "Thirty-Four Illustrations of Dante’s Inferno". Lewis is also the author of "Inhabitants and Visitors," a chapbook published by Clockshop and the Huntington Library and Museum. Her next book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, was published by Knopf in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phillip B. Williams</span> American poet (born 1986)

Phillip B. Williams is an American poet. Born in Chicago, he is the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels and Burn as well as the full length poetry collections Thief in the Interior and MUTINY.

Evie Shockley is an American poet. Shockley received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry for her book the new black and the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018.

References

  1. ↑ Lehman, David; Paisley Rekdal, eds. (2020). The Best American Poetry. Simon & Schuster. p. 232. ISBN   9781982106614.
  2. ↑ Busby, Margaret, ed. (2019). New Daughters of Africa (PDF). Myriad Editions. p. xiii. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-10-25. Retrieved 2021-10-06.
  3. 1 2 Herrington, Sarah (October 13, 2020). "Anatomy of Grief: A Conversation with Rachel Eliza Griffiths". Los Angeles Review of Books. Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  4. ↑ "Seeing the Body". W. W. Norton and Company. Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Biography". Hurston/Wright Foundation. Archived from the original on 2021-10-07. Retrieved 2021-10-07.
  6. ↑ Kellaway, Kate (June 17, 2023). "Interview | Writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths: 'There's a strength you don't realise you have access to'". The Observer .
  7. ↑ "Shadows in Light: An Interview with Rachel Eliza Griffiths". The Free Library. Retrieved October 15, 2023.
  8. ↑ Kellaway, Kate (June 17, 2023). "Interview | Writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths: 'There's a strength you don't realise you have access to'". The Observer .
  9. ↑ "'You put so much of your life and imagination into a book like this': Rachel Eliza Griffiths on her debut novel". Harper's Bazaar . July 5, 2023. Retrieved October 15, 2023.
  10. ↑ Pruden, Scott (August 6, 2020). "In Her New Book of Poetry, Rachel Eliza Griffiths Conveys Beauty in Loss". Delaware Today. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021.
  11. ↑ "Rachel Eliza Griffiths". poets.org. Archived from the original on 2021-08-30. Retrieved 2021-08-30.
  12. 1 2 "About". Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Archived from the original on 2021-08-30. Retrieved 2021-08-30.
  13. ↑ Moorer, Melissa (July 8, 2015). "This Writer's On Fire: Rachel Eliza Griffiths". The Toast . Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  14. ↑ Griffiths, Rachel Eliza (April 11, 2014). "Poets on Poetry: A Virtual Village of Discovery and Poetics". poets.org. Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  15. ↑ "Rachel Eliza Griffiths on Seeing the Body". Thresholds. Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  16. ↑ Morgan, Saretta (October 4, 2015). "The Risk of Being Human: an Interview With Rachel Eliza Griffiths". The Common. Archived from the original on October 7, 2021. Retrieved October 7, 2021.
  17. ↑ Purkert, Ben (August 3, 2020). "Back Draft: Rachel Eliza Griffiths". Guernica. Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  18. ↑ "NPR's Book Concierge". NPR. Archived from the original on July 8, 2020. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  19. ↑ Bosselman, Haley (March 28, 2021). "NAACP Image Awards 2021: The Complete Televised Winners List". Variety . Archived from the original on May 2, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  20. ↑ "Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Awards 2021 Winners Announced". James Murua's Literature Blog. October 18, 2021. Archived from the original on December 28, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2021.
  21. ↑ "2021 Paterson Poetry Prize Winner". The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. October 28, 2021. Archived from the original on December 30, 2021. Retrieved December 30, 2021.
  22. ↑ "Black nature : four centuries of African American nature poetry". WorldCat . OCLC   731270248.
  23. ↑ Busby, Margaret. "New daughters of Africa". WorldCat. OCLC   1066069680.
  24. ↑ "The Best American Poetry 2021 (The Best American Poetry series)". Library Thing . Archived from the original on October 9, 2021. Retrieved October 9, 2021.
  25. ↑ "Rachel Eliza Griffiths Names new Poet In Residence". Stella Adler Studio of Acting. January 22, 2020. Archived from the original on October 9, 2021. Retrieved October 9, 2021.
  26. ↑ "February 2021 Poem-a-Day Guest Editor Rachel Eliza Griffiths". poet.org. Archived from the original on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 30, 2021.
  27. ↑ "Stopping by with Rachel Eliza Griffiths". Poetry Society of America . 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-08-30. Retrieved 2021-08-30.
  28. ↑ "Cover reveal: See the cover for Rachel Eliza Griffiths's Promise". Literary Hub . February 23, 2023. Archived from the original on April 17, 2023. Retrieved April 17, 2023.
  29. ↑ Brown, Lauren (February 24, 2023). "John Murray signs Griffiths' 'powerful' novel Promise in first acquisition for Battle-Felton". The Bookseller . Archived from the original on April 17, 2023. Retrieved April 17, 2023.
  30. ↑ "Promise". Kirkus Reviews. April 24, 2023. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
  31. ↑ Thomas-Corr, Johanna (26 November 2023). "Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths review — the summer of funerals". The Times . Retrieved 26 November 2023.
  32. ↑ Moore, Opal (November 20, 2020). "Rachel Eliza Griffiths Interview". Mosaic Magazine. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021. Retrieved April 1, 2021.
  33. ↑ Remnick, David (6 February 2023). "The Defiance of Salman Rushdie". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 6 February 2023. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.