Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes is a poet whose innovative work has profoundly shaped contemporary literature. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1971, he studied painting and English at Coker College, earning a BA and serving as an Academic All-American on the men’s basketball team. He received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997. After graduate school, Hayes taught in southern Japan, Columbus, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana. He later held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, where he cofounded the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) and served on its International Advisory Board. He has been involved with the Pitt Poetry Series, including as co-editor until recently stepping down in 2025 to judge its poetry prize. Currently, Hayes is the Distinguished Silver Professor of English at New York University.

Hayes's poetry collections include Muscular Music (Tia Chucha Press, 1999), winner of the Whiting Writers' Award and Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic (Penguin, 2002), National Poetry Series selection and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and James Laughlin Award; Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist; Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), winner of the National Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; How to Be Drawn (Penguin, 2015), National Book Award finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and NAACP Image Award winner; American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin, 2018), finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, TS Eliot Prize, and others; So to Speak (Penguin, 2023); and the essay collection Watch Your Language (Penguin, 2023). Additional works include To Float in the Space Between (Wave, 2018), Pegasus Award winner for Poetry Criticism. Hayes received a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and United States Artists. He served as poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine (2017-2018) and guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2014. His poetry, appearing in ten editions of The Best American Poetry, explores race, identity, music, masculinity, and popular culture through inventive forms, establishing his enduring impact in literature.