09/14/2026
The Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University and the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh present
Two free events with poets Ama Codjoe and Jenny Xie
Thursday, October 8, 2026, 6:30-8:30 p.m. EDT
Writers on Writing: Ama Codjoe and Jenny Xie
Carlow University, 3333 Fifth Avenue, Aquinas Hall, Room 407
Free and open to Madwomen in the Attic currently registered in Fall 2026 workshops and to Carlow and Pitt English & Creative Writing students
Poets Ama Codjoe and Jenny Xie discuss the writing life, their personal paths to becoming writers, and their relationship to their most recent books.
RSVP to [email protected]
Friday, October 9, 2026; 6:00-7:30 p.m. EDT
Pleasure Principle: Reading & Conversation with Ama Codjoe and Jenny Xie
University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Cathedral of Learning, Room 332
Free and open to the public
Reception to follow
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest N**e (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2023, Codjoe was appointed as the second Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award and a recipient of a 2024 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Currently, Codjoe is the 2025-2027 Bonderman Assistant Professor of the Practice in Literary Arts at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Jenny Xie was born in Anhui province, China. She is the author of Eye Level, a finalist for the National Book Award and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and The Rupture Tense, a finalist for the National Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award, and a recipient of the Josephine Miles Award. Her chapbook, Nowhere to Arrive, received the Drinking Gourd Prize. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Kundiman, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Howard Foundation. She has taught at Princeton and NYU and is currently assistant professor of Written Arts at Bard College. She lives in New York City.
