Inside Scoop Events
Free lunch and fantastic guests. Inside Scoop events bring University of Illinois undergraduates from any major into close conversation about humanities and arts-related topics with distinguished Illinois faculty and visiting speakers.
Enjoy lunch on us in an informal setting where scholars and artists share the great moments of discovery, creativity, and excitement that fuel their research and creative work, helping us to understand what it means to be human in a rapidly changing world.
Spring 2026
RITA DOVE
Wednesday, April 15 at 12:00 p.m.
Location: Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center (1212 W. Nevada St., Urbana, IL 61801)
Undergraduates of any major are invited to this informal lunch talk with Rita Dove.
About the Speaker
Rita Dove served as US Poet Laureate from 1993–1995. Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and the 2023 honorary National Book Award, she also received the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Other recent honors are the 2021 Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she currently serves as vice president for literature, a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation and both the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award and the 2024 Leadership Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Past Inside Scoop Speakers
Ross Gay
Ross Gay 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, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position and only the second person to serve three terms in the role. Among her many writing accomplishments, she received the 2024 Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Society of America.
David Maraniss
David Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author and associate editor at The Washington Post. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won a Pulitzer for National Reporting for his 1992 coverage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Self-described “Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings,” Gumbs is a fiction and poetry writer and digital creator, among many pursuits and accomplishments.