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The Wolf Reading Series presents Cornelius Eady.

Poet, playwright, and Cave Canem co-founder Cornelius Eady was born in Rochester, New York, in 1954. He is the author of "Proof," a poem written for and read at the swearing in of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani in January 2026. He is also recipient of the 2025 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and has recently retired from his position as Professor of English and the John C. Hodges Chair of Excellence in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a position previously held by US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. He is the author of several collections, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Poetry Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Brutal Imagination, finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; and Hardheaded Weather. He wrote the libretto to Diedra Murray’s opera Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, and his verse play Brutal Imagination won the 2002 Oppenheimer Award for the best first play from an American playwright. Eady is also a songwriter; he performs with literary band the Cornelius Eady Trio, which whom he released the album Don't Get Dead: Pandemic Folk Songs (June Appal Recording, 2021). His work and songs has been featured on NPR, BBC Radio 4, and the PBS Newshour. His other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, along with the 2024 Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry and the 2023 Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry.