Congratulations, Robin Coste Lewis!

My incredibly talented and incredibly dear friend Robin Coste Lewis won the National Book Award two nights ago for her unbelievably brilliant first book of poetry, The Sable Venus. She was working on it while we were in graduate school together, so I had the deep privilege of reading it early, and it's stayed with me ever since.

At the reading last night.

So many of our classmates were there!

Last night, she gave a reading at our alma mater with Yusef Komunyakaa, who advised on both of our theses. It was a glittering reading, and I can't think of a better place to celebrate with her. She kept saying, "It's so crazy. It's so fucking crazy." and one of our classmates (Mike? Travis?) said, "It's not crazy at all. It's so deserved."

If you haven't read it already, go pick up The Sable Venus as soon as you possibly can. I love this book almost as much as I love Robin herself, and that's a lot of love. It's staggeringly good, and I'm so glad the National Book Foundation felt the same way!

This was at our graduation, but it's pretty much the exact face I made when I heard she won.

Congratulations, Robin!