Cornelius Eady is a poet, playwright and musician born in Rochester, NY. He is Co-Founder of Cave Canem and is Professor of English, and Chair of Excellence in Poetry at the University of Tenn. Knoxville. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Hardheaded Weather and Brutal Imagination, a finalist for The National Book Award in Poetry. He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of theater, including You Don’t Miss Your Water, Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999, Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received The Oppenheimer Award. His awards include Fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and he was The Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing and Professor in English and Theater at The University of Missouri-Columbia.