What is Terrance Hayes best known for?

Terrance Hayes is best known as an American poet and educator who has published seven poet collections. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry 2010.

He started his career as a teacher. He taught in diverse places including southern Japan, Columbus, Ohio and New Orleans, Louisiana.

After teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, he became a professor of English at New York University.

Hayes’s poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including, The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Fence and many others.

In January 2014, he was honoured as one of the 21 2014 fellows of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation. In 2017, Hayes was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.