In a city that rarely pauses, where attention is pulled in every direction at once, Camille T. Dungy is asking readers to slow down. For the award-winning poet, language is not just a means of expression but a way to repair, to listen and to reconnect in a culture that often feels fragmented.
Dungy's career and writing will be honored this year at the National Black Writers Conference, hosted at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Organized by the Center for Black Literature, the conference has long served as a gathering place for writers, scholars and readers to reflect on the past, present and future of Black literature.
This year’s theme, Environmental Justice, Popular Culture, Resilience and Peace, resonates deeply with Dungy’s work as a poet, editor and teacher whose writing frequently explores the natural world and the relationships between people, community and environment.
Dungy’s latest release America, A Love Story marks an important milestone in a career that has spanned decades. “My most recent book, which is published this month, is my tenth book,” she said. “So I’ve been writing poetry for a long time, and cared for a long time about what it means to slow down and use language, this tool with which we communicate and connect with others, with a kind of precision and care that is slightly different from the speedy pace of so much of how we live in the world these days.”
For Dungy, poetry offers readers an opportunity to pause and reflect. “Poetry just causes people to slow down,” she said. “It arranges words slightly differently and points out different connections. The way poetry inspires thoughtfulness, attentiveness and care, and celebrates beauty in unexpected places, all of those things feel really necessary.”
The themes highlighted at this year’s conference are not new directions for Dungy but ideas she has explored throughout her career. “Those are all key interests of my work and have always been key interests of my work,” she said.
Dungy edited what she describes as the first and still only anthology of African American environmental poets, and much of her own writing examines environmental sustainability and collective care.
“I write work that’s really focused on questions of environmental sustainability, community resilience and the creation of sustainable futures,” she explained. The connection between literature and the environment continues to shape how she thinks about poetry’s role in contemporary life.
Being honored at the conference carries particular personal meaning for Dungy. The award she will receive is named after Gwendolyn Brooks, the celebrated Chicago poet whose work helped shape generations of writers.
“I grew up in a house that respected literature and respected poetry,” Dungy said. “Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the writers I was first introduced to when I was very young. She’s a poet whose work I’ve been reading my whole life, and whose work and life have really been models to me. So it’s particularly special.”
Founded in 1986, the National Black Writers Conference continues to bring together writers and readers from across the country for discussions, readings and panels that celebrate the breadth of Black literary voices. For Dungy, the importance of such gatherings lies in the power of community.
“The quick answer that came to me actually comes from my upbringing in the church,” she said. “When two or more are gathered in my name. There’s something very powerful about people gathering with a common positive ambition. It makes a difference in the world.”
While poetry has always been present in her life, Dungy emphasizes that writing is still a conscious commitment. “One of the things you have to do in this world is decide every day what is a value and what’s important,” she said. “I decide very regularly that writing and poetry are going to be something I prioritize, because the world has plenty of distractions to keep me going in other directions. And my poems are really thinking through what it means to choose love and to demand love every day living as a Black woman in America,” she said.
A full schedule and ticket information on the National Black Writers Conference can be found here.
Sanctuary by Camille Dungy
The way she holds her huge limb forward,
patient and expectant, while the slight man
untethers the old prosthetic, a cage of metal,
polyurethane, and canvas large enough
that I could stand inside. Sweet elephant,
waiting as the man sets aside the artificial leg
then turns back to the nylon sleeve that cups
her nub, rolling that down like a lover
or a mother removes underwear from a body
they adore. That gently. That disinterested
in causing harm. That dear elephant, steady
all this time on her three remaining legs
while the man strokes the nub of her mine
blasted one, its pucker scar a forever wound
that reminds me of the chest of a woman
who has refused reconstructive surgery
after losing one breast to the scalpel. The scar
like a nipple stretched into a grin. I want
to compare the look of that nub to something
you will understand, America, but there’s no way
to say it other than this. When she was seven
months old, the elephant walked on a land mine.
After that, some people wanted to kill her.
How could she survive, doubled over and using
her trunk as a crutch, leaning always on trees?
Put her out of her misery, they said. But look
where she landed instead. In this sanctuary,
where every few months, as she continues
to grow, some people redesign and gently,
while she waits, warm gray and patient, secure
around her blasted nub a new and sturdy leg.
Sanctuary © Camille Dungy 2026, from America, A Love Story, Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.
