Join Ross Gay, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, as he shares his new intimate and electrifying collection of essays, Inciting Joy in conversation with nationally acclaimed poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib. In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it.

Registration is on Eventbrite. The $5 admission fee is waived with the purchase of Inciting Joy.  

KING ARTS COMPLEX and OHIO POETRY ASSOCIATION are Gramercy’s Community Partners for this program.

In “We Kin” he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in “Share Your Bucket” he explores skate boarding’s reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in “Grief Suite”; and in “Through My Tears I Saw,” he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.

In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, Inciting Joy is essential reading from one of our most brilliant writers.

Ross Gay is the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights: Essays and four books of poetry. His Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Be Holding won the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. He is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a nationally acclaimed poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His most recent book of essays, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and named one of the ten best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. He is the author of two poetry collections, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and A Fortune for Your Disaster, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by NPR, Esquire, BuzzFeed, O: The Oprah Magazine, Pitchfork, and Chicago Tribune, among others. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award and Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the National Book Award. In 2021, he was named a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow.

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