Cornelius Eady

Cornelius Eady
reading at Folger Shakespeare Library, 2014
Born	1954 Rochester, New York
Nationality	American
Genre	Poetry
Literary movement	co-founded Cave Canem Foundation

Cornelius Eady (born 1954) is an American writer focusing largely on matters of race and society, His poetry often centers on jazz and blues, family life, violence, and societal problems stemming from questions of race and class. His poetry is often praised for its simple and approachable language.

Cornelius Eady was born in Rochester, New York and is an author of seven volumes of poetry. In most of Eady’s poems, there is a musical quality drawn from the Blues and Jazz.

Recently awarded honors include the Strousse Award from Prairie Schooner, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and individual Fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Eady has also recently collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don't Miss Your Water, Running Man, Fangs, and Brutal Imagination. Eady's work also appears in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.

In 1996, Eady and fellow poet Toi Derricotte founded Cave Canem Foundation, a nonprofit organization for black poets.

Cornelius Eady has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The Writer's Voice, The College of William and Mary, University of Notre Dame, and Sweet Briar College. Formerly an associate professor of English and Director of the Poetry Center at State University of New York at Stony Brook and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the City College of New York, Eady currently lives in Columbia, Missouri with his wife, novelist Sarah Micklem, and holds the Miller Chair in Poetry at the University of Missouri.