Dr. Bruce MacLaren Chautauqua Lecture Series: Clint Smith

Published on February 08, 2022

The Dr. Bruce MacLaren Chautauqua Lecture Series resumes Thursday, February 10, 2022 when Clint Smith, a staff writer at The Atlantic brings his message “How the Word Is Passed” to campus. 

Smith’s address will be streamed on YouTube at 7:30 p.m.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhwY7O9n968

He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and the poetry collection, Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.

Smith has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art for Justice Fund, Cave Canem and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere.

Clint is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion and a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review. His two TED Talks, “The Danger of Silence” and “How to Raise a Black Son in America,” collectively have been viewed more than 9 million times.

All EKU Chautauqua events are free and open to the public. 

Smith’s lecture is sponsored by the African/African American Studies Program, the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Center for Inclusive Excellence and Global Engagement, the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences and the Honors Program.