Sjohnna McCray, the accomplished poet, has died (March 7, 1972 – June 21, 2023).
McCray won the 2015 Academy of American Poets First Book Award (previously known as the Walt Whitman Award) for his book Rapture. According to the Academy of American Poets, judge Tracy K. Smith said of his writing:
These poems are so beautifully crafted, so courageous in their truth-telling, and so full of what I like to think of as lyrical wisdom—the visceral revelations that only music, gesture and image, working together, can impart—that not only did they stop me in my tracks as a judge, but they changed me as a person. Sjohnna McCray’s is an ecstatic and original voice, and he lends it to family, history, race and desire in ways that are healing and enlarging. Rapture announces a prodigious talent and a huge human heart.
McCray’s debut Rapture was published by Graywolf Press in the Spring of 2016. His poetry collection received praise for its complex relationship with companionship and family and its exploration of Vietnam. He would go on to win the AWP Intro Journal Award and the Emerson Poetry Prize.
McCray was also well-known for his essays about healthcare, family, and being gay in the Midwest. His work was published in New York Times Magazine, Chicago Quarterly Review, and many more prestigious journals.
McCray was a dedicated teacher and writer, and we mourn the loss of this incredible writer and community member.
