Renee Good, Old Dominion poet, killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis

Renee Good, 37, a writer who lived in Minneapolis, was shot and killed on Wednesday by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and a vigil was held that night on Portland Avenue where the shooting occurred. Kent Wascom, director of the creative writing M.F.A. program at Old Dominion University, said he met Ms.

Good in 2019 when she took his fiction class and that she consistently sought to write beyond her own experience, about elderly people, veterans and others. Wascom said she completed coursework while pregnant and working to support herself, continued attending remote classes when the pandemic began, and that he and other professors helped ensure she could finish her degree; he recalled she later brought her baby to his office to thank him.

In 2020 Ms. Good won Old Dominion’s American Academy of American Poets Prize. Rajiv Mohabir, a poetry professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who served as a guest judge for the contest, said he selected her poem "On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs" from about 20 redacted submissions for its tension between brutality and wonder.

Mohabir, who said he never met Ms.

Key Topics

Politics, Renee Good, Ice Agent, Minneapolis, Old Dominion University, Kent Wascom