OU to welcome Ross Gay for basketball-themed poetry reading April 14
April 02, 2026
Poetry and basketball will take center court when Oakland University welcomes acclaimed poet and essayist Ross Gay for its 2026 Maurice Brown Memorial Poetry Reading. Now in its 38th year, the series is named for Maurice Brown, a beloved OU English professor, and supported by his family.
This year’s event, “Poetry Month Madness: Celebrating Poems and Basketball,” will take place at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14, at the OU Recreation Center basketball courts. The event is free and open to the public.
During his visit, Gay will read from his poems and essays involving basketball, including “Be Holding,” a single poem which is an extended ekphrastic meditation on a photograph of basketball hall-of-famer Julius Erving’s midair “baseline scoop” in the 1980 NBA finals. A video clip of the iconic play will be shown at the reading.
“It seemed a perfect coincidence for our basketball-themed reading that Ross could visit campus in April, which is National Poetry Month, on the heels of March Madness,” said Dr. Katie Hartsock, associate professor in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film. “We have fantastic creative writing students at OU, and we have our fantastic Golden Grizzly basketball teams, coaches, and fans. I hope these two groups will get a chance to enjoy poetry together at this event.”
Gay is one of America’s premier authors, writing poetry and essays which richly illuminate a variety of American experiences in their joys and complexities, from urban gardening to basketball. He is the author of four books of poetry: “Against Which,” “Bringing the Shovel Down,” “Be Holding,” winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award, and “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
In addition to his poetry, Gay has released three essay collections: “The Book of Delights,” a New York Times bestseller; “Inciting Joy” and his newest collection, “The Book of (More) Delights,” released in September 2023.
Born in 1974 in Youngstown, Ohio, Gay grew up chiefly in Philadelphia and attended, on a sports scholarship, Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where he discovered his passion for poetry. After receiving an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in English from Temple University, he is now a professor of English at Indiana University in Bloomington, and one of contemporary literature’s best-known and most beloved names due to frequent rave reviews and excerpts of his books in national venues such as NPR and The New York Times.
Along with his love for basketball, Gay is also known for his work's exploration of joy even – and often especially – in the context of difficulty or grief.
“He has a way of mixing the ephemeral and the eternal, humor and grief, the individual and the collective, in a way that has made him the famous writer he is,” said Hartsock. “We creative writing professors felt we wanted to bring this energy to our students, in a time when so many college students face challenges and uncertainties like never before.”
A Q&A will follow the reading and books will be available for purchase. Gay will sign books after the reading.
The event is sponsored by the Judd Family Endowed Fund, the Maurice Brown Memorial Poetry Series, the Donna and Walt Young Honors College, Sigma Tau Delta and the Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film, with special thanks to Judy Brown and Mathilde Brown Swanson for their continued support.
For more information, contact Professor Hartsock at [email protected].
