Lit House Welcomes Cave Canem Fellow Kevin Vaughn for Month of July

CHESTERTOWN, MD—The Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College welcomes poet Kevin Vaughn as its second Cave Canem Fellow. Vaughn will be in residence in Chestertown through July and will offer a free public reading from his work as part of a “Summer Poetry Salon” with fellow poet Sandra Beasley and the Pam Ortiz Band on Tuesday, July 24.

Literary House director Jehanne Dubrow, who selected Vaughn for this summer’s fellowship, says she is thrilled to have him on campus. “Kevin's work is informed by subjects as diverse as early Star Trek episodes, the challenges of translation, and Eastern European poetics,” she says.  “He brings a global perspective to the literary conversation taking place here at the Rose O'Neill Literary House.”

The well-traveled Vaughn, who lives in Paris, speaks four languages and was a J. William Fulbright Fellow at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. Earlier, he studied in Prague, Czech Republic, and in Athens, Greece. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, he has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies including WheelHouse Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, Mississippi Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V and Cave Canem XII.

Established in 1997 to cultivate the artistic and professional growth of African American poets, Cave Canem offers book prizes, workshops, readings and other events. The month-long Cave Canem residency at the Rose O’Neill Literary House was introduced in July 2011. The first poet to visit Chestertown under the program, Arisa White, used her fellowship to work on a book of poems titled Hurrah’s Nest. Published in February by Virtual Artists Collective, the collection earned top honors for poetry in the 2012 San Francisco Book Festival’s best-books competition.

For more information about the event, visit http://lithouse.washcoll.edu/

or call 410-778-7899.