Rae Paris is from Carson, California with roots extending to New Orleans. Her work has been supported by an NEA Literature Fellowship, and residencies from the Wurlitzer Foundation, the Hambidge Center, ACA, Hedgebrook, and VONA. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at MSU where she co-founded the Womxn of Color Initiatives. In 2018 she'll join the MFA faculty at the University of Washington. The Forgetting Tree: A Rememory remembers her father’s life and death within an assemblage of past and present racial violence and resistance to terror. Kiese Laymon describes The Forgetting Tree as “necessary reading for anyone serious about loving Black people.” Tony Medina says, “This is an auspicious and audacious debut from a poet and prose stylist who does not play.” Carolyn Forché calls it “harrowing and elegiac,” and Tracy K. Smith says, “The Forgetting Tree punctures our national reticence around slavery, and offers a measure of necessary healing.

Cosponsored by College of Arts and Letters, Center for Gender in Global Context, Department of English, and MSU Libraries.