Poet Camille Dungy
Acclaimed poet Camille Dungy will read and sign her books at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 15, at Second Story Books, 105 Ivinson Ave. in Laramie.
The University of Wyoming's MFA Visiting Writers Series will host the free event.
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).
A professor in the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University, 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.
Critic Alan Shapiro praises Dungy's most recent work 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."
Poet and UW Eminent Writer in Residence Ed Roberson says, "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 mentors a new generation of writers. The program's Visiting Writers Series brings distinguished writers and emerging new voices to Wyoming. Recent guests include Claudia Rankine, Don DeLillo, Kate Greenstreet, Ben Marcus and many others.
For more information about Dungy or the Visiting Writers Series, visit the MFA website at https://www.uwyo.edu/creativewriting or contact Gwynn Lemler at cw@uwyo.edu or (307) 766-6453.
