Robin Coste Lewis

Robin Coste Lewis is an American poet, born in Compton, California, in 1964. She received her B.A. from Hampshire College, her M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and her M.F.A. from New York University, where she was the Goldwater Fellow at NYU's Institute for the Humanities. Her debut collection Voyage of the Sable Venus (2015) won the National Book Award for Poetry, making her only the second debut collection in two decades to win the prize. The title poem is a tour de force — an erasure poem constructed entirely from titles, captions, and descriptions of artworks from antiquity to the present that mention a Black female figure. The collection explores Black female beauty, history, and representation. Lewis is the Provost's Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing in the English department at the University of Southern California. She has been a recipient of the Cave Canem Fellowship and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference Scholarship.