2026 Department of English Sidney Kaplan Lecture - Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

The Department of English announces author and poet, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, will deliver the Kaplan Memorial Lecture at the Main Hall, Old Chapel, on Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 4:30pm.

Honorée Fannone Jeffers is the 2021 recipient of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry for her collection The Age of Phillis, which was also long listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. Her first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published in 2021 and received the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. It as also longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.

The Kaplan Memorial Lecture was established by the English Department to present major figures in the field of American Studies and sponsor talks on the kind of intellectual topics Kaplan pursued—boundary-crossing enterprises like Jewish, multi-ethnic, feminist, and African American studies. Kaplan’s legacy extends especially to Black studies and Black history as well as studies of the relatedness in American culture of Black and white.

A book signing with the author will follow the event.