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Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975, Portland, Oregon)^[1] is an American poet, and is currently Poetry Editor of Image.^[2]

McCrae was the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Award,^[3] and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award^[4] and a PEN Center USA Literary Award.^[5] In 2013, McCrae received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.^[6] He received a Lannan Literary Award^[7] in 2017, in 2018 his collection In the Language of My Captor won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award,^[8] and in 2019 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[9]

His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI.^[3]

Early life and education

Born in Portland, Oregon to a white mother and black father, he was kidnapped by his maternal grandparents when he was three years old and raised him to believe that his father had abandoned him.^[10] His grandfather was a white supremacist who abused him.^[10] They moved to California when he was 10 years old,^[1]^[11] and he grew up in Texas and California.^[12] He did not see his father again until he was 16.^[10]

He dropped out of high school and later earned a GED certificate and had a child at 18.^[11]^[10] He attended Chemeketa Community College.^[1] In 2002, McCrae graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.^[13] In 2004, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.^[14] In 2007, he graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD.^[14]^[12] In 2012, he earned a Master of Arts from the University of Iowa.^[14]

Career

McCrae was an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at Oberlin College 2015–2017^[15] and is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at Columbia University.^[16]

He is the author of the poetry collections Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011),^[17] Blood (Noemi Press, 2013), Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014), The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015), In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017),^[18] The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022),^[19] and Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023).^[20]

Awards

In 2011, McCrae received the Whiting Award,^[3] and in 2012 his collection Mule was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award^[4] and a PEN Center USA Literary Award.^[5]

The Animal Too Big to Kill won the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award.^[21]

In the Language of My Captor was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.^[8]

McCrae received a Lannan Literary Award^[7] in 2018, and a Guggenheim Fellowship^[9] in 2019.

Sometimes I Never Suffered was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize.^[22]

In 2020, McCrae received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.^[23]

Works

In Canaan, Milwaukee: Rescue Press, 2010. ISBN 9780984488919, OCLC 707718211
Mule, Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011. ISBN 9781880834930, OCLC 732166609
Blood, Noemi Press, 2013. ISBN 9781934819302, OCLC 931029174
Nonfiction, Pittsburgh, PA: Black Lawrence Press, 2014. ISBN 9781937854980, OCLC 833301672
Forgiveness Forgiveness, Hadley, MA: Factory Hollow Press, 2014. ISBN 9780983520313, OCLC 890624391
The Animal Too Big to Kill, New York: Persea Books, 2015. ISBN 9780892554645, OCLC 913514526
In the Language of My Captor Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017. ISBN 9780819577115, OCLC 1018464460
The Gilded Auction Block, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. ISBN 9780374162252, OCLC 1035365132
Sometimes I Never Suffered, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. ISBN 9780374240813, OCLC 1182576051
Cain Named the Animal, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. ISBN 9780374602857, OCLC 1246143402
Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping, New York: Scribner, 2023. ISBN 9781668021743, OCLC 1390879054
The Many Hundreds of the Scent: Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. ISBN 9780374607197, OCLC 1344332594