“Refuge” was written as the closing statement to the conference “Seeking Refuge: Faith-Based Approaches to Forced Migration,” which took place at Princeton University on March 3 and 4, 2017.
TRACY K. SMITH is the author of three previous books of poetry: The Body’s Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize; Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; and Life on Mars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Other honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and an Academy of American Poets Fellowship. In 2017, Smith was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of the Humanities and Director and Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University, and lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her family.
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