Poet/Playwright/Songwriter and Cave Canem Co-Founder Cornelius Eady was born in Rochester, NY in 1954, and is Professor of English, and the John C. Hodge Chair of Excellence at the University of Tenn. Knoxville. He is the author of eight poetry collections, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Brutal Imagination, and Hardheaded Weather, nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He wrote the libretto to Diedra Murray’s opera Running Man, which was short listed for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999, and his verse play Brutal Imagination won the Newsday/Oppenheimer Award for the best first play from an American Playwright in 2002. His “pandemic folk song” project, Don’t Get Dead, recorded with his folk Trio, was released in early November 2021 by June Appal Recordings. His work has appeared on NPR, PBS and BBC Radio and his awards include Fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Elizabeth Kray Award from Poets House, where he served as Interim Director from 2021-2022. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cornelius.eady Twitter: https://twitter.com/roughband Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluespoet/