Claudia Rankine will discuss race in America and West Michigan. She will go over her book “Citizen: An American Lyric”, winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. The author’s visit is part of the Community Reading Project sponsored jointly with Grand Valley State University (www.gvsu.edu/read). Rankine is a poet, playwrite and the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College. She authored five collections of petry. Her honors include Lannan Foundation and National Endowments for the Arts fellowships. Rankine was awarded the Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by the Academy of American Poets, where she was later elected a chancellor.