Women Poets and Writers At Barnard present:
Spring 2009 Reading Series Summary
(see the authors' bios below)

Unless noted otherwise, the readings are on Tuesday evenings,
 and the rooms are on the Barnard College campus.

Speakers	Date	Time	Location
MEENA ALEXANDER, MARY JO BANG, and MÓNICA DE LA TORRE Women Poets at Barnard	February 3, 2009	7 PM	Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall)
CHRISTOPHER RICKS, "LOUISE BOGAN (ALONGSIDE E.NESBIT): /WHAT PURPORTS TO BE SURRENDER/" Women Poets at Barnard	February 24, 2009	7 PM	Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall)
YVETTE CHRISTIANSË - POETRY AND FICTION READING Cosponsored by the Africana Studies Department	March 24, 2009	7 PM	Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall)
KATHA POLLITT, EVIE SHOCKLEY, and RACHEL WETZSTEON Women Poets at Barnard	April 7, 2009	7 PM	Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall)
AARON HAMBURGER, ELIZA MINOT, & DARCEY STEINKE (authors currently teaching at Barnard) Writers at Barnard	April 14, 2009	7 PM	Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall)
STUDENT WRITERS Writers at Barnard	Thursday, April 23, 2009	7 PM	Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall)
ADRIENNE RICH & ANTJIE KROG: Prose, Poetry and the Art of the Political Sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Institute for Comparative Literature, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and Barnard Women Poets	April 28, 2009	8 PM	Altschul Auditorium, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Bios:

February 3, 2009

• Meena Alexander is the author of several books of poetry, including Illiterate Heart, which won the PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk, and Quickly Changing River. She has also written two books of prose, Poetics of Dislocation and the memoir, Fault Lines. She teaches at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
   

• Mary Jo Bang is the author of five books of poems, the most recent of which, Elegy, received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her sixth collection, The Bride of E, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
   

• Mónica De La Torre is author of three books of poetry, Talk Shows, Ac˙fenos, and Public Domain. She co-wrote the artist book Appendices, Illustrations & Notes, and co-edited Reversible Monuments: Mexican Contemporary Poetry. She is senior editor at BOMB Magazine.

February 24, 2009

• Christopher Ricks examines the work of American poet Louise Bogan (1897-1970), alongside English poet and children’s author Edith Nesbit (1858-1924). Ricks is Professor of Poetry at Oxford University and co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University. He is the author of many critical studies, including Milton’s Grand Style, The Force of Poetry, Allusion to the Poets, Beckett’s Dying Words, and Dylan’s Visions of Sin. He is presently at work on a full critical edition of T. S. Eliot’s complete poems.

March 24, 2009:

• Poet and fiction writer Yvette Christiansë was born in South Africa under apartheid and immigrated with her parents to Australia at age 18. Her work has been published internationally, and her poetry collection, Castaway, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN International Poetry Prize. Her acclaimed first novel, Unconfessed, is based on the life of a slave woman in the Cape Colony and was a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway/PEN International Prize for First Fiction. Christiansë received her Ph.D. from the University of Sydney and teaches in the English department at Fordham University, NY.

April 7, 2009

• Katha Pollitt is the author of Antarctic Traveller, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a new book of poems forthcoming in 2009.  She is also the author of several books of prose, including Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism and Learning to Drive.  Pollitt’s “Subject to Debate” column for The Nation is “the best place to go for original thinking on the left” (Washington Post).
   
• Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea and two chapbooks, The Gorgon Goddess and 31 words * prose poems.  Currently a guest editor of jubilat, her recent poems appear in The Southern Review, Ecotone, Achiote Seeds, La Petite Zine, Columbia Poetry Review, and Tuesday. Shockley teaches at Rutgers University. 
   
• Rachel Wetzsteon is the author of three collections of poems, The Other Stars, Home and Away, and Sakura Park.  She is also the author of Influential Ghosts: A Study of Auden's Sources.  She has received grants and prizes from the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at William Paterson University. 

April 14, 2009:

• Aaron Hamburger was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his short story collection The View From Stalin's Head (Random House, 2004), which was also nominated for a Violet Quill Award.  His next book, a novel titled Faith For Beginners (Random House, 2005), was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.  His writing has appeared in Poets and Writers, Tin House, Details, Out, Time Out New York, and the Forward, and he has won a fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation.  Currently he teaches creative writing at Columbia University and the Stonecoast MFA Program.
   
• Eliza Minot is the author of the novels The Tiny One and The Brambles, both published by Alfred A. Knopf. Her work has appeared in the magazines Real Simple, The New York Times Magazine, Allure, Travel and Leisure Family, and Hallmark, among others, as well as in the anthologies The Dictionary of Failed Relationships and Sex and Sensibility. She is a 2007 recipient of a Prose Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and is at work on her third novel titled American Standard.
   
• Darcey Steinke is the author of four books, three of which were New York Times Notables.  Easter Everywhere, a memoir, was published in 2007. Her novel Suicide Blonde has been translated into eight languages, and her novel Milk has been translated into four.  Her non-fiction has been featured in Vogue, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, Spin, The Boston Review, and The New York Times.  She currently teaches at both Columbia and New School University in New York City.  She lives with her daughter in Brooklyn.

April 28, 2009:

• For many decades, Adrienne Rich and Antjie Krog have been at the forefront of the dissident tradition within their respective language worlds, writing poetry and prose that pushes the limits of form while questioning the structures of political violence in which they live.  Both are among the most lauded writers of their generation, receiving acclaim and prizes around the world despite but also because of their insistent critique of the status quo.  Both have created works of inimitable beauty and force.  Both have championed justice and equality. And each woman has read and admired the works of the other across the miles and oceans. For the first time ever, these artists will share the stage, reading together from both prose and poetry.

For more information on Women Poets at Barnard, contact its Director, Prof. Saskia Hamilton, at shamilton(at)barnard(dot)edu,