WORCESTER, Mass. – As part of the College of the Holy Cross Visiting Writers Lecture Series, the following writers will give readings during the 2007 spring semester. All readings are free and open to the public. This series is sponsored by the College’s Creative Writing Program.
Feb. 1
Cleopatra Mathis
4:30 p.m., Levis Browsing Room
Cleopatra Mathis was born and raised in Ruston, La. She is the Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the English department at Dartmouth College, where she is also director of the Creative Writing Program. She is the author of six books of poetry including What to Tip the Boatman? (Sheep Meadow Press, 2001) and White Sea (Sarabande, 2005). What to Tip the Boatman? won the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poems in 2001. Cleopatra Mathis’ work has appeared widely in magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Tri-Quarterly, The Southern Review, and The Georgia Review. Various prizes for her work include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, in 1984 and 2003; the Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets; two Pushcart Prizes, 1980 and 2006; The Robert Frost Resident Poet Award; a 1981-82 Fellowship in Poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; The May Sarton Award; and Individual Artist Fellowships in Poetry from both the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the New Jersey State Arts Council.
Feb. 22
Peter Balakian
7:30 p.m., Rehm Library
Peter Balakian is the author of many books including Reply From Wilderness Island (poems, 1988); Sad Days of Light (poems, 1983); Father Fisheye (poems, 1979); Dyer’s Thistle (poems, Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, 1996; and June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974–2000. His book, Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir won the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir and was a New York Times Notable Book. His various awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize 1975; the Daniel Varoujan Prize, New England Poetry Club; the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Book Prize, 1998; a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship 2004-05; and a Guggenheim fellowship 1999-2000. His poetry and essays have appeared in The Nation, Art in America, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Poetry. He holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and teaches at Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities.
March 21
Wesley McNair
8 p.m., Levis Browsing Room
Wesley McNair is the author of eight collections of poetry, including six full-length volumes and two limited editions. His most recent collections of verse are Talking in the Dark, Fire, and his most recent volume, The Ghosts of You and Me, published in 2006. A volume of his essays about poetry in New England, Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry, was published by Carnegie Mellon in 2003 in its Prose on Poetry Series. Some of the magazines and journals in which his poems and essays have appeared are: Agni, The Atlantic Monthly, Gettysburg Review, Green Mountain Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New Criterion, New England Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. McNair is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Foundations, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in literature, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for Creative Writers, and Individual Artist fellowships in poetry from state arts councils in both Maine and New Hampshire. Other honors include the Robert Frost Prize; the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry (for Fire); and the Devins Award for poetry.