Tracy K. Smith gave a commencement address for Columbia College Chicago’s class of 2016. The video embedded above features the Pulitzer Prize winner delivering her speech.
Here’s an excerpt: “As a writer, I wanted to test my voice. To see if it might be capable of saying something not just to the community of teachers and classmates who had come to know and understand me, but also to strangers. And to the strange versions of myself, that with luck and hard work, language would help me to find.”
This year, a great number of writers have given moving commencement speeches. Hamilton: A Revolution co-author Lin-Manuel Miranda spoke at the University of Pennsylvania. Culper Ring series author Brad Meltzer spoke at the University of Michigan Law School. The Fault in Our Stars novelist John Green returned to his alma mater Kenyon College to speak.