“Poet Claudia Rankine will present Transylvania University’s 2016 Kenan Lecture on Monday, Feb. 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Her five poetry collections include the “Citizen: An American Lyric,” which is the only poetry book to make the non-fiction category of the New York Times bestseller list. At Transylvania she will discuss making the book and the question of creative imagination and race.

Rankine—who also is a playwright, essayist and editor of several anthologies—is the Aerol Arnold Chair at the University of Southern California.

“Citizen” has won numerous honors, including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. It also was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.

“This collection of lyrical essays or poetic prose bears witness to the experience of everyday encounters with racism,” Transylvania professor Jeremy Paden said. “It moves in and through the feelings and thought processes of the person trying to understand the experience of these injustices. ‘Citizen’ names and narrates these experiences. And in reading and listening to the poems, in learning from them, our world is enlarged.”

Transylvania’s Kenan Lecture Series and is funded by a grant from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust.

Previous speakers have included: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and activist; Michele Norris, a National Public Radio correspondent and best-selling author; CNN analyst Peter Bergen; Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first female president; and actress Mary McDonnell.

Tickets are free to the public and can be picked up in the William T. Young Campus Center beginning Feb.10 or at the box office window that night. For more information, call 859-233-8120.

Parking for Haggin Auditorum, which is in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center, is available in an adjacent lot off West Fourth Street near Upper Street.”