Nathaniel Mackey in conversation with Fred Moten, celebrating the launch of his new poetry collection, "Double Trio," published by New Directions. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete.

You can purchase copies of "Double Trio" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/staff-picks/double-trio-tej-bet-sos-notice-nerv/

Nathaniel Mackey was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947. He is the author of several books of fiction of "exquisite rhythmic lyricism" (Bookforum), poetry, and criticism and has received many awards for his work, including the National Book Award in poetry for Splay Anthem, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Mackey is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University.

Fred Moten is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical studies, black studies, and performance studies. Moten is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside and the University of Iowa. His scholarly texts include "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study" which was co-authored with Stefano Harney, "In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition," and "The Universal Machine" (Duke University Press, 2018). He has published numerous poetry collections, including The Little Edges, The Feel Trio, B Jenkins, and Hughson's Tavern. In 2020, Moten was awarded a for "[c]reating new conceptual spaces to accommodate emerging forms of Black aesthetics, cultural production, and social life."

This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation