Cornelius Eady is a poet, playwright and songwriter born in Rochester, New York in 1954. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Putnam, 2008). His second book, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, won the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1985; in 2001 Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award. Other awards include Fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Traveling Scholarship, and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award. In 1996 Eady co-founded, with writer Toi Derricotte, the Cave Canem summer workshop/retreat for African American poets. Eady formerly taught at American University in DC and Notre Dame University. He is currently The Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing and Professor in English at The University of Missouri-Columbia.