Camille Dungy

UW MFA Creative Writing Program Welcomes Visiting Writer Camille Dungy

The University of Wyoming’s MFA Visiting Writers Series is pleased to present a reading by the acclaimed poet Camille Dungy on September 15. Dungy will read from her work at 5pm at Second Story Books, which is located at 105 Ivinson Avenue. This event is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book-signing.

Dungy is the author of Smith Blue (2011), winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize, Suck on the Marrow (2010), and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (2006). She is the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (2006). Dungy has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Cave Canem, the Dana Award, and Bread Loaf. She is currently a Professor in the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University.

Dungy's most recent work has been praised by Alan Shapiro for its "exquisite moments of intimacy caught in the meshes of history, of human depredation registered in language as plainspoken as it is rich in implication." Shapiro concludes that "Smith Blue is a gorgeous and powerful book, one of the best I've read in recent years."

Likewise, of the collection, poet and UW Eminent Writer in Residence Ed Roberson says the following: "These are large, open-hearted lyrics about love: its pleasure, its neglect, loss and remembrance. Love here is not just parental and fraternal or of lovers and husbands, but a love for butterflies, things and their places. With a subtle variety yet balance of line, these are not ponderous pronouncements, but the voice of a graceful wondering about the world and the way we carry on."

The MFA Creative Writing program aims to mentor a new generation of writers. Each semester, the program's Visiting Writers Series brings distinguished writers and emerging new voices to Wyoming. The program is fortunate to add Dungy to its list of recent guests, which includes Claudia Rankine, Don DeLillo, Kate Greenstreet, Ben Marcus, and many others.

For more information about Dungy or the Visiting Writers Series, please visit the MFA website at www.uwyo.edu/creativewriting or contact Gwynn Lemler at cw@uwyo.edu or 766-6453.

Website

Event

Camille Dungy Public Reading

Second Story Bookstore

Thursday, September 15, 2011

5:00 p.m.