Author Paul Lisicky to Read at Literary House

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Novelist Paul Lisicky will give a reading at the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College, 407 Washington Avenue, on Thursday, February 16 at 4:30 p.m. Sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the reading is free and open to the public.

Lawnboy, Lisicky’s debut novel, garnered much high-profile praise. Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham called it “the real thing, a novel of mystery and great beauty,” and added that “the appearance of a writer like Paul Lisicky… is a rare event.”

In addition to Lawnboy (Turtle Point Press, 1998), Lisicky has published a memoir titled Famous Builder (Graywolf Press, 2002) and the novel The Burning House (Etruscan Press, 2011). His latest, a collection of prose pieces titled Unbuilt Projects, is scheduled for publication by Four Way Books next fall. Many of his shorter works have been included in anthologies or appeared in publications that include The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Story Quarterly.

A graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lisicky has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., where he was twice a fellow. He has taught in the graduate writing programs at Cornell University, Rutgers-Newark, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches at NYU. To learn more, visit his Website: http://paullisicky.com/.

Tolkien Scholar to Talk at Literary House

CHESTERTOWN, MD—The Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College hosts Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger on Tuesday, Feb. 7 at 4:30 p.m. She will lecture on the topic, “Oo! Those Awful Hobbits: Tolkien Versus the Academy.”
 The event is sponsored by the College’s Sophie Kerr Committee and is free and open to the public.

Flieger has taught courses on J.R.R. Tolkien at the University of Maryland for the past 35 years and has published three books on his fiction: Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music. She also edited an expanded edition of his short story Smith of Wootton Major and co-edited a collection of essays on the history of Middle-earth, as well as a critical edition of Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories.” She is co-editor with Michael Drout and Douglas Anderson of Tolkien Studies, the only journal devoted exclusively to Tolkien’s work.

Flieger also is an author of her own fiction: a fantasy novel titled Pig Tale, its sequel The Inn at Corbies’ Caww, and the Arthurian novella Avilion. To learn more about Verlyn Flieger, visit http://mythus.com/.

The Literary House is located at 407 Washington Avenue. For more information on its programs, visit http://lithouse.washcoll.edu/.

Poet H.L. Hix to Read at Lit House Nov. 3

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College will welcome poet H.L. Hix to the Rose O’Neill Literary House on Thursday, November 3. His poetry reading, part of the English Department’s “Living Writers” course, will begin at 4:30 p.m.

“H.L. Hix is that rare poet who is equal parts historian, journalist, archivist, and singer,” said fellow poet and poetry critic Susan M. Schultz. One reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly wrote of Hix’s work, “Sometimes achingly beautiful, sometimes grisly and violent, and sometimes tersely intellectual, Hix’s collections have always been hard to forget.”

Hix’s poetry has been published in many national journals, including Harvard Review, Poetry, and McSweeney’s. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has won prestigious poetry awards such as the Grolier and the T.S. Eliot Prizes.

Hix’s 2006 collection Chromatic (Etruscan Press) was a National Book Award finalist for poetry.

A professor of creative writing at the University of Wyoming, he has also served as a visiting professor at Shanghai University and at the University of Texas. His Nov. 3 reading at Washington College is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee and is free and open to the public.

Visiting Poet Mixes the Erotic and the Divine

CHESTERTOWN, MD—As a part of the English Department’s “Living Writers” course, poet Jill Alexander Essbaum will read from her collections at the Rose O’Neill Literary House on Thursday, October 27. The reading, which begins at 4:30, is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee.

Billed on her website as “Christian and erotic poetry,” Essbaum’s writing combines unique and unexpected elements, including sex and divinity, with wordplay. Critic G.M. Palmer has said no other poet today “dares play with such spiritual fire … Her poems skirt on the edge of blasphemy and pray for re-readings.”

Of her own work, Essbaum says, “I write a lot of awfully laudatory verses praising many things that religion tends to traditionally condemn. It isn’t lost on me that I’m writing about acts that just a few centuries ago might have got me hanged. But we don’t live in a regime where our poems can land us in the same hot waters as other poets from different lands or from other eras do or did.”

Essbaum’s poems have appeared in national journals, including Poetry, Image, and The Christian Century, and her debut collection, Heaven, won the 1999 Bakeless Prize, an annual book series competition for burgeoning authors. She has since published two additional collections, Harlot (2007) and Necropolis (2008). She teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

Noted Shakespeare Scholar to Deliver the First “Lecture in Jewish Thought,” October 19 at WC

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Dr. Miriam Gilbert, a distinguished Shakespeare scholar and professor of English at the University of Iowa, will deliver the first Washington College Lecture on Jewish Thought on Wednesday, October 19. Her talk, “Shakespeare and the ‘likeness of a Jew,’ ” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall, in the Toll Science Center, with a reception to follow in the McLain Atrium.

Gilbert will discuss Jewish actors and directors who have performed in or directed productions of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and how their own backgrounds and experiences may have informed their work on the play and the portrayal of the character Shylock.

“When Shakespeare created one of the most famous fictional Jewish characters in literature, Shylock, there were probably very few Jews in England, and certainly not openly or legally,” says Gilbert. “So what images and stereotypes and beliefs lie behind this character? How has his representation on stage changed in the course of 400-plus years of performance? And what do those changes indicate about our understanding of Shakespeare’s play, and the tensions it presents? I’ll be exploring these questions, paying special attention to performances of the past forty years, in England,” she adds about her upcoming talk at Washington College.

Gilbert, who has taught at the University of Iowa since 1969, has written performance histories (Shakespeare in Performance: Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1993, Shakespeare at Stratford: The Merchant of Venice, 2001), as well as articles on teaching Shakespeare through performance. She has led eight seminars sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and now teaches a course titled “Shakespeare: Page and Stage” for the Bread Loaf School of English at Lincoln College, Oxford. She has a second home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, where she lectures for The Shakespeare Centre.

The Oct. 19 event is free and open to the public. Sponsors include The Sophie Kerr Committee, Washington College Hillel, the Rose O'Neill Literary House, Phi Beta Kappa, and The Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture.

For more information, visit http://www.washcoll.edu.

x

Scholar Shares the Evolution of Whitman’s Poetry Through his “Biography” of Leaves of Grass

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Preeminent Walt Whitman scholar Ed Folsom will speak at the Rose O’Neill Literary House on Monday, October 24 at 4:30 p.m. In his talk, “Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: The Biography of a Book,” Folsom will present excerpts from a book-in-progress by the same title.

Folsom, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and co-director of the digital Whitman Archive, is Roy J. Carver Professor of American Literature at the University of Iowa. Though his courses encompass nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, he has a particular passion for Whitman’s work.

“A Whitman poem feels like a living, growing thing,” says Folsom, whose upcoming Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: The Biography of a Book (under contract with The University of California Press), examines the many drastic changes the poet made to his work from its original publication in 1855 until his death.

Folsom received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the research and writing of the book. He has been recognized with the University of Iowa’s President and Provost’s Teaching Award and has been named an outstanding faculty member by the Graduate College. He was a featured expert in the 2008 PBS documentary “Walt Whitman,” part of the network’s American Experience series, and has been an invited lecturer at the annual meetings of the American Literature Association.

Folsom’s lecture will be followed by an open house in the Print Shop with a demonstration by Master Printer Mike Kaylor. Both the lecture and the print shop event are free and open to the public. Sponsors are the Sophie Kerr Committee and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

Philosopher Richard Kearney to Speak Oct. 5 on the Sacred and the Poetic in Modern Literature

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Distinguished philosopher and author Richard Kearney will speak at the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College on Wednesday, Oct. 5, at 4:30 p.m. His talk, “Anatheism and the Poetic Imagination,” will explore the relationship between the sacred and the poetic in modern literature, with particular reference to Gerard Manly Hopkins and Virginia Woolf.

Kearney is the author of more than 20 books on European philosophy and literature. His most recent work, Anatheism: Returning to God after God (Columbia University Press, 2009), explores the split between theism and atheism, defining ana-theos as “a moment of creative ‘not knowing’ that signifies a break with former sureties and invites us to forge new meanings from the most ancient of wisdoms.” The New Yorker’s James Wood praised Anatheism as “a heartfelt, pragmatic, and eminently realistic argument” about belief in God in the modern world. “Richard Kearney wants to see what is left of God, in the time after God, and he does so superbly well,” Wood wrote.

Kearney, who holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College, is a Visiting Professor at many prestigious universities throughout the world, including University College Dublin and the Sorbonne. As an important intellectual in Ireland, Kearney was involved in drafting several proposals for a Northern Irish peace agreement in the 1980s and ’90s, as well as serving as a member of the Arts Council of Ireland and the Higher Education Authority of Ireland. He is also the international director of the Guestbook Project, a multimedia investigation of hospitality and connecting to strangers across different religions and cultures. For more on his career, visit his Web site.

“Anatheism and the Poetic Imagination” is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee and the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture and is free and open to the public. For more information: http://www.washcoll.edu.

Goodheart to Read from Best-Selling History, Tuesday, May 3 at Hynson Lounge

CHESTERTOWN, MD—On Tuesday, May 3, at 4:30 p.m., Washington College’s Adam Goodheart will give a reading from his new book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening, which was published three weeks ago by Alfred A. Knopf and is already a New York Times Best Seller garnering wide critical acclaim. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. A book signing will follow. Goodheart's reading is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the Rose O'Neill Literary House, and the Washington College Department of History.

In a publishing year in which the 150th anniversary of the Civil War has sparked a flood of new books about the conflict, none has received more positive press and critical praise than 1861. In a front-page review in the April 24 issue of the New York Times Book Review, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate described Goodheart's account of the secession crisis as "exhilarating" and "inspiring," praising the author for his ability to combine the journalist's eye for telling detail with the historian's rigorous research and the novelist's ability to make readers care about his characters. "1861 creates the uncanny illusion that the reader has stepped into a time machine," Applegate wrote.

The new work of history, which Knopf describes as "a sweeping portrait of America on the brink of its defining national drama," was also excerpted in the New York Times Magazine on April 3. Goodheart has recently appeared on panels with filmmaker Ken Burns and noted historians James McPherson of Princeton and David Blight of Yale, and will be giving talks and readings at universities and cultural institutions across the country in the months ahead. (For a listing, visit http://www.adamgoodheart.com/events.) He has been a guest this month on CNN, Fox News, and the nationally broadcast public radio shows "Fresh Air," "Here and Now," and "Studio 360," among many other venues. (Click here to listen to the Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross.)

Praise for the book has been effusive from the start. Kirkus Reviews called it "beautifully written and thoroughly original—quite unlike any other Civil War book out there," and Pulitzer-winning historian McPherson wrote that "Adam Goodheart is a Monet with a pen instead of a paintbrush." The Boston Globe's reviewer wrote, "Hardly a page of this book lacks an important insight or a fact that beguiles the readers. ... Goodheart shows us that even at 150 years' distance there are new voices, and new stories, to be heard about the Civil War."

Goodheart is the Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. Based at the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown's colonial waterfront, the Starr Center supports the art of written history and explores the nation's past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu

Washington College Announces Plans for Sophie Kerr Prize Events in Chestertown and NYC

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College has announced major changes in the way its famous Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate literary prize in the world, will be awarded this spring. Changes include the first-ever naming of finalists; a special reception for those finalists in New York City, where an internationally prominent novelist will announce the big winner; and a simultaneous party in Chestertown where the local community can watch the announcement live on a big screen.

The excitement begins Friday morning, May 13, when the Sophie Kerr Committee meets in secret to discuss student portfolios and select as many as five finalists for the Prize. The names of the finalists will be announced that day at a 2:30 p.m. press conference for local media.

On Tuesday, May 17, the finalists will meet in New York at an evening reception at Poets House, a literary center on the banks of the Hudson River. The celebration will feature a keynote talk from Colum McCann, winner of the 2009 National Book Award for his novel Let the Great World Spin. McCann, whose book award came with a check for $10,000, will then announce the winner of the Sophie Kerr Prize, this year valued at more than $61,000.

The reception at Poets House will begin at 6:30 p.m. At the same time, Washington College will host a wine and cheese reception in Chestertown, at which the campus and community will watch a simulcast of McCann’s talk and the announcement of the winner in real time on a big screen. The party will be held in the Casey Academic Forum on campus, 300 Washington Avenue, and will be free and open to the public.

Come May 22, the Sunday of Washington College’s 228^th Commencement, the Sophie Kerr Prize and a check for $61,062.11 will be officially awarded to the winner.

The members of the Sophie Kerr Committee say the new plan will relieve the stress and emotional angst the prize has caused at past graduations for students and their families. “If you have 30 students who applied, one will be ecstatic when the winner is announced,” says English professor Rich Gillin, interim chair of the Sophie Kerr committee, “but the other 29 are going to leave the last day of college feeling pretty miserable.”

In addition, the selection of finalists and the announcement in New York spreads the glory and gives the finalists a memorable experience in the publishing capital of the world. According to Sophie Kerr’s will, the college cannot disaggregate the prize money, but it can disaggregate the prestige and give more students, as finalists, the chance to add an impressive achievement to their resumes.

“I just think that this can be an enhancement of a wonderful tradition at Washington College,” says President Mitchell Reiss. “It’s a way to benefit more students while showcasing our writing program and our rich literary heritage to a wider audience.”

Photo: Sophie Kerr, whose short stories were published in the major women's magazines of her day, specified that half the income from her generous bequest to Washington College be awarded each year to the graduating senior who showed the most literary ability and promise.

"Dirty Life" Author Recounts Move from City Girl to Sustainable Farmer in April 13 Talk

CHESTERTOWN – Washington College hosts author Kristin Kimball to discuss her new memoir, The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love, on Wednesday, April 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Hotchkiss Recital Hall in the Gibson Center for the Arts. (This event was originally scheduled for February but was postponed by incluement weather.)

Kimball and her husband, Mark, farm 500 acres on Essex Farm, near Lake Champlain in northern New York. They met when she was a free-lance travel writer living in a studio apartment in New York and he was working on a farm in Pennsylvania. What began as an interview for an article on sustainable farming would soon take a romantic turn.

"Against all odds, I fell deeply for him, and for farming,” says the author, whose book was published in October of 2010 by Scribner. “At the end of the first growing season, we got married in the loft of our shabby red barn. We've farmed here for seven years now, and have become parents to two little girls."

The Kimballs raise almost everything they need for a year-round diet, including 50 kinds of vegetables, herbs, grains, and fruits, plus pigs, chickens, and dairy and beef cattle. They use no pesticides or herbicides, and most of the work is done with draft horses instead of tractors. The farm feeds 150 people, who come each week to pick up their share of our produce, flours, milk, meats, and eggs.

A graduate of Harvard University, Kristin Kimball grew up near Rome, NY, where she didn't even have a garden as a child. Prior to farming, she wrote, taught writing and worked for a literary agent. “Farming asks a lot of a person, physically, emotionally, and intellectually,” she comments. “It keeps you close to the dirt and humble. I've gained many skills on the farm that I couldn't have imagined needing in the city. But the best lesson farming has taught me is the deep pleasure of commitment—to Mark, to our farm, to a small town."

The program, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by The Center for Environment & Society, The Joseph H. McLain Program in Environmental Studies, The Sophie Kerr Committee, and Farm Dinners on the Shore. For more information, call 410-778-7295.

Poet Billy Collins Visits For Annual Sophie Kerr Weekend

Public Reading March 19-20 in the Norman James Theatre

Chestertown, MD, February 16, 2004 — Washington College's Sophie Kerr Committee,O'Neill Literary House and Admissions Office welcome the 2001-2003 United States Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, to campus for the College's annual Sophie Kerr Weekend for high school students interested in creative writing. Collins will give a public reading from his works Friday, March 19, at 4 p.m. in the College's Norman James Theatre. The event is free and all are invited to attend.

A phenomenon in the world of contemporary literature, Collins is a poet who has stepped out of chapbook obscurity into popular success. Accessible, humorous, and contemplative, Collins has been called “an American original” and “a metaphysical poet with a funny bone.” The author of seven books of poetry, including Nine Horses (2002), Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001), Picnic, Lightning (1997), The Art of Drowning (1995), and Questions About Angels (1991)—selected by Edward Hirsch for the National Poetry Series—Collins also has recorded a CD audiobook of poetry, The Best Cigarette (1997). His poetry has appeared in anthologies, textbooks, and periodicals, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Harper's, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. Collins' works have been selected for The Best American Poetry anthology in 1992 and 1993 and have garnered him the Bess Hokin, Frederick Bock, Oscar Blumenthal, and Levinson prizes from Poetrymagazine. Collins has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and for several years he has conducted summer poetry workshops at University College-Galway. He is poet-in-residence at Burren College of Art in Ireland and professor of English at Lehman College (CUNY).

The Sophie Kerr Weekend is named in honor of the late writer from Denton, MD, whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's creative writing program and literary culture. When Kerr died in 1965, she left the bulk of her estate to the College specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor,” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Poet Suzanne Cleary To Read At Washington College, Oct. 30

Chestertown, MD, October 23, 2003 — Washington College's Sophie Kerr and O'Neill Literary House Lecture Series present a reading by poet Suzanne Cleary, Thursday, October 30, at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the Miller Library. All are invited to this free event.
Suzanne Cleary was born and raised in Binghamton, NY. She earned a M.A. in writing from Washington University and a Ph.D. in literature and criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She currently works as an associate professor of English at SUNY-Rockland in Suffern, NY. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, The Massachusetts Review and other journals, and her book reviews have appeared in Bloomsbury Review and Chelsea Review. Writing about Cleary's recent collection Keeping Time (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002), U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins observed, “I have long been anticipating this first book, and the chance to express how highly I value Suzanne Cleary's poetry. Her poems have a vigorous forward roll to them and are strung together by daring chains of association. It is refreshing to read a poet who wants to hide nothing, to turn over all the cards at once. High time she had a book, a place for her original voice to echo.”
The reading is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, which carries on the legacy of Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, MD, whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, she left the bulk of her estate to the College specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor,” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet W.D. Snodgrass To Read At Washington College, October 16

Chestertown, MD, October 13, 2003 — Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.D. Snodgrass will read at Washington College on Thursday, October 16, at 7 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the Miller Library. All are invited to this free event.
William DeWitt Snodgrass was born in Wilkinsburg, PA, in 1926. His more than twenty books of poetry include The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle (1995); Each in His Season (1993); Selected Poems, 1957-1987; The Führer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (1977), which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; After Experience (1968); and Heart's Needle (1959), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1960. He has also produced two books of literary criticism, To Sound Like Yourself: Essays on Poetry (2003) and In Radical Pursuit (1975), and six volumes of translation. His honors include an Ingram Merrill Foundation award and a special citation from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Snodgrass is often credited with being one of the founding members of the “confessional” school of poetry—a classification he vigorously eschews—having had a tremendous impact on that facet of contemporary poetry. “Like other confessional poets, Snodgrass is at pains to reveal the repressed, violent feelings that often lurk beneath the seemingly placid surface of everyday life,” observed critic David McDuff. Snodgrass' later works also show a widening vision, applying the lessons of self-examination to the problems of modern society. In style and technique, Snodgrass' poetry “successfully bridged the directness of contemporary free verse with the demands of the academy,” according to Thomas Lask of The New York Times.
The reading is sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, which carries on the legacy of Sophie Kerr, a writer from Denton, MD, whose generosity has done so much to enrich Washington College's literary culture. When she died in 1965, she left the bulk of her estate to the College specifying that one half of the income from her bequest be awarded every year to the senior showing the most “ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor,” and the other half be used to bring visiting writers to campus, to fund scholarships, and to help defray the costs of student publications.

Black History Month Reading: Poet Calvin Forbes On Campus February 28th

Chestertown, MD, February 21, 2002 — The Sophie Kerr Committee, in celebration of Black History Month, presents poet Calvin Forbes reading from his work on Thursday, February 28, 2002, at 4:30 p.m. in the College's Sophie Kerr Room, Miller Library. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

A former assistant professor of creative writing at the College, Forbes is "one of the prominent black voices to develop out of the 1970s . . . He communicates a . . . highly moral philosophy as well as the thoughts and emotions of a writer whose artistic ability and vision are still expanding," according to Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Robert A. Coles. Forbes spent his poet's apprenticeship hitchhiking around the United States, working with poet Jose Garcia Villa at the New School for Social Research, and studying the works of John Donne, Gwendolyn Brooks and Philip Larkin. Whether writing about the lives of street people or the origin of the artistic impulse, in all his work, observes Coles, "Forbes is skillful in the way he suggests double, and sometimes, triple layered meanings through tight control over simile and metaphor, both of which spark clear, powerful phrases and images."

Forbes was born in Newark, NJ in 1945. He attended the New School for Social Research, Rutgers University, and Brown University, where he earned his M.F.A. His books of poetry include "The Shine Poems" (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), "From the Book of Shine" (1979), and "Blue Monday" (1974). His poems have appeared in many journals and can be found in anthologies such as "A Century in Two Decades: A Burning Deck Anthology, 1961-81" (1982) and "New Black Voices" (1972). His honors and awards include fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Forbes currently is an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches writing, literature and jazz history.

Poet Daniel Mark Epstein To Read From His Works, Lecture On Millay February 19th

Chestertown, MD, February 8, 2002 — Washington College welcomes award-winning poet, biographer, essayist and playwright Daniel Mark Epstein to campus Tuesday, February 19, 2002. He will read from his works at 4 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the Miller Library, and present the lecture "Poetry and Biography: Writing the Life of Millay" at 7:30 p.m. in the Hynson Lounge. Both events are free and the public is invited to attend.

Born in Washington, DC, Daniel Mark Epstein was raised in Maryland and received his B.A. in English from Kenyon College in 1970. His poetry has earned him numerous awards and fellowships, notably the NEA Poetry Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Prix de Rome and the Robert Frost Prize. His work has been anthologized in several collections of essays and poetry, and his books include biographies of Aimee Semple McPherson and Nat King Cole, and seven volumes of poetry. His most recent book, "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves & Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay" (Henry Holt & Co., 2001) has garnered both critical and popular success by giving readers unique insights into Millay's legendary life and "ecstatic" creative process. Mr. Epstein lives in Baltimore.

Mr. Epstein also will be signing books from 11 a.m. to 12 noon on Wednesday, February 20, at the Compleat Bookseller, 301 High Street, Chestertown.

The reading and lecture are sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

Dinshaw to Speak on Gender and Queer Studies

Chestertown, MD, April 4, 2001 — Dr. Carolyn Dinshaw, professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University, will address the topic "Gender Studies, Queer Studies: Local and Global Perspectives" on Wednesday, April 18, 2001, at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Washington College's Miller Library. Sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the talk is free and open to the public.

Dr. Dinshaw helped to establish the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) which opened at NYU in the fall of 1999. A medievalist by training, Dr. Dinshaw received her Ph.D. in 1982 from Princeton University. She has taught courses on Chaucer, Middle and early modern English language and literature, European medieval literature, feminist studies and queer studies. She also founded a program in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender studies at the University of California-Berkeley, where she taught from 1982 to 1999.

Dr. Dinshaw believes that dialogue on the issues of gender and sexuality gains greater complexity and detail when viewed with a long historical lens and she is fascinated by the forms that bodies and pleasures might have taken before they were specifically formulated into modern sexualities in the West. With David M. Halperin, she is founder of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Duke University Press), the leading scholarly journal in the rapidly expanding field of queer studies. Her current research articulates queer literary-historical studies with the insights of postcolonial studies.

Poet Gerald Barrax to Read from his Works March 28

Chestertown, MD, March 26, 2001 — African American poet, editor and essayist Gerald Barrax will read from his works on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Washington College's Miller Library.

Barrax previously served on the English faculty of North Carolina State University at Raleigh, where he was Poet in Residence from 1993-1997. His poetry has appeared in such periodicals as Poetry, Journal of Black Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Hambone, The Georgia Review, Callaloo, The American Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Barrax has received numerous honors including The Edward Stanley Award for Poetry from Prairie Schooner, the 1993 Raleigh Medal of Arts for Extraordinary Achievement in the Arts, the Sam Regan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts in North Carolina, the 1983 Callaloo Creative Writing Award for Non-Fiction Prose, and the Ford Foundation Graduate Fellowship for Black Americans.

His published books include From a Person Sitting in Darkness: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1998), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Leaning Against the Sun (The University of Arkansas Press, 1992), also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, The Deaths of Animals and Lesser Gods (The University Press of Virginia, 1984), An Audience of One (University of Georgia Press, 1980), and Another Kind of Rain (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970).

Sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the reading is free and open to the public.