Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander combines poetry, scholarship, teaching, and cultural leadership. She composed and recited “Praise Song for the Day” during Barack Obama's 2009 presidential inauguration, after years of teaching literature and African American studies. The Trayvon Generation, issued by Grand Central Publishing in 2022, expands her New Yorker essay into a meditation on art, race, memory, and the experiences of young Black Americans. The 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry listed American Sublime among its finalists; the 2016 Biography prize did the same for The Light of the World. Alexander's academic career included professorships at Smith College, Columbia, and Yale, where she taught for fifteen years and chaired African American Studies. She serves as president of the Mellon Foundation.