Nikky Finney | Head Off and Split

Mon, April 16, 2012 7:30 P.M.
Parkway Central Library

Cost: $15 General Admission, $7 Students

2012 Philadelphia Book Festival

STUDENTS FREE WITH ID

Nikky Finney won the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry for her collection, Head Off and Split, an intimate and intense dialogue with emblematic people and events in African American life. Praised for its exacting eye for uncanny and heartbreaking portraits, the book artfully enlivens figures ranging from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney is the author of three previous books of poetry, including On Wings Made of Gauze, The World Is Round and Rice. A professor of English and creative writing at the University of Kentucky, she is co-founder of the award-winning multicultural group, Affrilachian Poets.

Supported by the Independence Foundation