Born in Rochester, New York, Cornelius Eady is a poet, playwright, and songwriter who co-founded the Cave Canem Foundation with Toi Derricotte in 1996. Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986) was the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets, and Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2001) was a National Book Award finalist. The stage adaptation of that book received Newsday's Oppenheimer Award in 2002. His libretto for Diedre Murray's opera Running Man was a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist in drama. He received the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award in 2025.
