Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae (born September 22, 1975, in Portland, Oregon) is an American poet who is also the poetry editor of the journal Image and an associate professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

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

His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Fence, and AGNI. His grandfather was a white supremacist who abused him. but he grew up there and in Texas. He has earned three graduate degrees: an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in Iowa City (2004), a J.D. from Harvard Law School (2007), and an M.A. from the University of Iowa (2012). and is an associate professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at Columbia University.

He is the author of the poetry collections Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), 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), 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), and Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner, 2023).

Awards In 2011, McCrae received the Whiting Award,

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.

In 2020, McCrae received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

In 2023, McCrae received the Arthur Rense Prize, an award given only every three years for a poet's "exceptional" body of work.

Works In Canaan, Milwaukee: Rescue Press, 2010. , Mule, Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011. , Blood, Noemi Press, 2013. , Nonfiction, Pittsburgh, PA: Black Lawrence Press, 2014. , Forgiveness Forgiveness, Hadley, MA: Factory Hollow Press, 2014. , The Animal Too Big to Kill, New York: Persea Books, 2015. , In the Language of My Captor Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017. , The Gilded Auction Block, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. , Sometimes I Never Suffered, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. , Cain Named the Animal, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. , Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping, New York: Scribner, 2023. , The Many Hundreds of the Scent: Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. ,