The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) has named Justin Phillip Reed as its new creative writing fellow.

The Fellowship in Creative Writing at CAAPP was established in 2017 as a two-year opportunity to provide an early-career poet with time and space to pursue their own creative work while they participate in community and classroom activities at the University.

A South Carolina native, Reed is the author of “Indecency,” which won the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He also wrote the chapbook “A History of Flamboyance.” Reed earned a bachelor of arts degree in creative writing at Tusculum College in Tennessee and a master of fine arts degree in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as junior writer-in-residence. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Conversation Literary Festival and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. His work has been featured in Best American Essays.

“We're extremely excited that poet and essayist Justin Phillip Reed will be joining us as the next CAAPP Fellow,” said Dawn Lundy Martin, director of CAAPP. “We have every confidence that whatever he does during his two years at Pitt will be important to the literary community writ large, and we have every confidence that he will contribute in beautiful and unexpected ways to intellectual and creative life in Pittsburgh.” 

Rickey Laurentiis was the first person named as a CAAPP fellow and is finishing up the two-year fellowship this summer.

Housed within Pitt’s Department of English in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, CAAPP was founded in 2016 as a creative think tank for African-American and African-diasporic poetries and poetics. Its mission is to highlight, promote and share the work of African American and African diasporic poets and to pollinate cross-disciplinary conversation and collaboration.