Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae grew up in Texas and California. He earned a B.A. from Linfield College, an M.A. from the University of Iowa, an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He serves as an associate professor in Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program and lives in New York City.

McCrae is the author of several poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (2022), a finalist for the Forward Prize; Sometimes I Never Suffered (2020), a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Rilke Prize; and In the Language of My Captor (2017), which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

McCrae’s other honors include the Lannan Literary Award, the Michael Marks Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.