This event is now at capacity. There will be a stand-by line in front of Tresidder Oak Lounge before the event begins, and we welcome individuals to wait there starting at 6 pm in case there ends up being room in the audience. We also invite you to fill out this form to learn more about Hanif's public events in winter and spring quarters. 

Stanford Public Humanities' flagship speaker series, What Is a Public Intellectual Today, will feature an interview on craft and career with the 2025-26 Denning Visiting Artist Hanif Abdurraqib, hosted by Public Humanities and the Creative Writing Program. Book selling/signing to follow. 

Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Abdurraqib will be joined in conversation by Matthew D. Morrison, an acclaimed musicologist and Associate Professor in Stanford's Department of African and African American Studies. His work has been published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, American Music and the Grove Dictionary of American Music. His book Blacksound: Making Race in Popular Music in the United States (University of California Press, 2024) was awarded the Prose award for excellence in the Humanities by the Association of American Publishers, recognized by Rolling Stone as one of the "Best Books in Music of 2024," and named a finalist for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award (2024).

Stanford Public Humanities and the Creative Writing Program are tremendously grateful to the co-sponsors for this event: the Departments of English, Communication, African and African American Studies, and Music; the Institute for Diversity in the Arts; the Institute for Advancing Just Societies; the Journalism Program; the Program in Modern Thought and Literature; the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity; the Markaz Resource Center; and the Black Community Service Center.