A Summer Evening with Hanif Abdurraqib

We hope that you can join us for a free summer event with poet, essayist, cultural critic, and National Book Award–honored author Hanif Abdurraqib to celebrate his newest book, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.

Abdurraqib will be joined in conversation with Ajanaé Dawkins, interdisciplinary poet, performance artist, and theologian, at Jeni’s Clintonville shop. Free copies of There’s Always This Year available for attendees while supplies last.

This in-person event is presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams as part of the National Book Foundation’s first-ever Summer Reading Adventure. Join in the adventures at nationalbook.org/adventure, and submit to win prizes, including pints of Jeni’s ice cream and two tickets to the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 20th!

About the Authors

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio, and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant. His most recent book, A Little Devil in America, was the winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burns Prize and a Finalist for the National Book Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t K*ll Us Until They K*ll Us, was named one of the books of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist and was Longlisted for the National Book Award. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Ajanaé Dawkins is an interdisciplinary poet, performance artist, and theologian. Through poetry, she archives her matrilineage to explore the politics of faith, grief, and intimacy between Black women. Through essays, she blends literary criticism, memoir, and theology as autotheory to explore the relationship between Black poetics and Black theologies. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review and more. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX, is the winner of the New Delta Review’s 2024 chapbook prize. Ajanaé is a co-host of the VS podcast and Urban Art’s Space’s 2024 Community Artist-in-Residence.

Host or Publisher National Book Foundation