World Premiere: Brutal Imagination premiered Off-Broadway at The Vineyard Theatre in New York in the winter of 2002. It received the 2002 Oppenheimer Award for most impressive New York debut play. 5th Title in Illuminations Series: Illuminations is a series from TCG Books dedicated to revisiting plays known and loved, and paying tribute to works previously overlooked. Edited and curated by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the series begins by publishing classic plays by Black playwrights. Brutal Imagination is the fifth title in this series, following Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, Day of Absence / Happy Ending by Douglas Turner Ward, Insurrection: Holding History by Robert O'Hara, and The Story by Tracey Scott Wilson. National Book Award in Poetry Finalist: Brutal Imagination, the book of poems from which this play was adapted, was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons (now an imprint of Penguin Random House) in 2001 and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.

Pulitzer Finalist: Eady's music-drama Running Man, composed by Diedre Murray, was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Cave Canem Foundation co-founder: Along with Toi Derricotte, Eady is Co-founder of Cave Canem Foundation, an acclaimed non-profit organization that seeks to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in the literary landscape through fellowships, regional workshops, prizes, and a Legacy Series, as well as readings and other presentations that highlight the poetry of Cave Canem Fellows and the work of poets from the African diaspora more generally. Institutional Affiliations: He is Professor of English and Chair of Excellence in Poetry at the University of Tennessee. Previously he was The Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing and Professor in English and Theater at The University of Missouri, Columbia. He has also taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The College of William and Mary, University of Notre Dame, Sweet Briar College, SUNY Stony Brook, and City College of New York. Awards for Cornelius Eady: Eady has been awarded the Strousse Award from Prairie Schooner, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His music-drama Running Man, composed by Diedre Murray, was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He is a recipient of the 2023 Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry.

Widely Published Writer: Eady's collections of poetry include The War Against the Obvious (Jacar Press, 2018), Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Penguin, 2008), Brutal Imagination: Poems (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2001), The Autobiography of a Jukebox: Poems (Carnegie Mellon Press, 1997) You Don't Miss Your Water: Poems (Henry Holt, 1995), The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon Press, 1991), BOOM, BOOM, BOOM: A Chapbook (State Street Press, 1988), Victims of the Latest Dance Craze: Poems (Ommation Press, 1986), and Kartunes (Warthog Press, 1980).