Pulitzer Prize-winner Galway Kinnell
among poets reading April 24-27
at inaugural Asheville WordFest
ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell is one of
more than 20 poets featured in the inaugural Asheville WordFest poetry
festival April 24-27.
Kinnell is the author of 10 books of poetry, including “Selected Poems,”
which won the National Book Award in 1980.
Asheville WordFest features an array of readings, workshops, and
children's activities to celebrate the power of poetry in an increasingly
manufactured media environment, said WordFest director, Laura Hope-Gill.
“Asheville WordFest is a cutting-edge event to feed the deep hunger we all
have for authentic experience, at a time when so much of our experience is
manufactured by corporations with something to sell, rather than something to
tell,” said Hope-Gill, a leader in Asheville's thriving performance-poetry
scene in the 1990s.
“Poets like Galway Kinnell share with us their gift for 'taking life by
the throat,’ as Robert Frost, another great American poet, once said. All of
our WordFest poets do just that,” she said. WordFest events are free and open
to the public.
Asheville WordFest kicks off at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 24 in
UNC-Asheville's Humanities Lecture Hall with readings by four-time National
Slam Poetry champion Patricia Smith and Rick Chess, author of three books of
poetry and director of creative writing at UNCA.
Other main events at UNCA's Humanities Lecture Hall include readings at 7
p.m. Friday, April 25 by Simon Ortiz, MariJo Moore, and N.C. Poet Laureate
Kathryn Stripling Byer.
New Mexico poet Ortiz is the winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Lifetime
Achievement Award of the Returning the Gift Festival of Native American
Writers.
Moore is the author of five books of poetry and is a two-time winner of
the Wordcrafter of the Year award from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers
and Storytellers.
Byer is a former writer-in-residence at Western Carolina University and
author of four books of poetry, including “Wildwood Flower,” the 1992 Lamont
Selection of the Academy of American Poets.
WordFest's readings at UNCA conclude at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 26 with
Galway Kinnell and Iranian poet Fatemah Keshavarz, professor of Persian and
comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis, and Director of
the Center for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations.
[PLEASE NOTE: WPVM-103.5 FM will broadcast the 7 p.m. readings live from
UNC-Asheville on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 24-26.]
Keshavarz is also the author of three books on Persian poetry, including
the recently published “Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in
Tehran.”
WordFest evening events at UNCA will be webcast live via the nonprofit
Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) at www.main.nc.us. Podcasts will be
available via MAIN's radio station, WPVM, 103.5 FM or www.wpvm.org.
Other WordFest events include:
- “Re-Opening the Green Door: A Retrospective of Asheville's Performance
Poetry Scene” at 10 p.m. Friday, April 25 at Malaprops bookstore.
- Rumi translator and poet Coleman Barks with bassist Eliot Wadopian at 2
p.m. Saturday, April 26 at the Fine Arts Theater.
- WordFest reception and booksigning at 4 p.m. Saturday, April 26 at
Malaprops bookstore.
- Poetix Lounge at 10 p.m. Saturday, April 26 at Bobo Gallery on Lexington
Avenue.
- Flood Gallery Reading by Glenis Redmond, Sebastian Matthews, Laura
Hope-Gill, Rose McLarney, and Mark Prudowsky at 12 noon Sunday, April 27,
corner of Clingman and Roberts in the river district.
- “This History Isn’t Closed: A Protospective of The Black Mountain
College Legacy” by Lee Ann Brown and Cathy Wagner at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 27
at Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, 56 Broadway, downtown
Asheville. Donation requested.
- “WordFest Local” with Jeff Davis, David Hopes, Laura Hope-Gill, Gary
Copeland Lilley, Thomas Rain Crowe, Allan Wolf, Keith Flynn, and Lee Ann
Brown at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 27 at Black Mountain College Museum and Arts
Center, 56 Broadway, downtown Asheville.
Asheville WordFest is sponsored by MAIN via a grant from the N.C.
Humanities Council. Additional support is provided by Asheville BookWorks,
Rivendell Journal, UNCA, Malaprops, and Black Mountain College Museum and
Arts Center.
For more information, visit www.ashevillewordfest.org. END
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