English Department Events, Spring 2006
Joan Larkin Poetry Reading, February 2
Kurt Brown Poetry Reading, February 14
Action Books Panel Discussion, February 27
Terrance Hayes and Tim Seibles Poetry Reading, March 29
7th Annual Columbia College Citywide Undergraduate Poetry Festival, April 6
Harryette Mullen and Jean Valentine Poetry Reading, April 19
COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW Poetry Reading, May 4
- Joan Larkin Poetry Reading , February 2
Columbia College Concert Hall: 1014 South Michigan (5:30pm) 
Joan Larkin is the author of Housework, A Long Sound, and Cold River (poetry); The AIDS Passion, The Living, The Hole in the Sheet, and Brother Dust (plays); and If You Want What We Have and Glad Day (prose). She is co-translator (with Jaime Manrique) of Sor Juana's Love Poems, editor of four anthologies of poetry and prose, and poetry editor of Bloom. Twice winner of the Lambda Literary award for poetry, she co-founded the independent press Out & Out Books and co-edited the ground-breaking anthologies Amazon Poetry and Lesbian Poetry (with Ellly Bulkin) and Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (with Carl Morse) in the 1970's and 80's. Her anthology of coming-out stories, A Woman Like That, was nominated for Publishing Triangle and Lambda awards for nonfiction in 2000. She earned a B.A. at Swarthmore College, an M.A. in English at the University of Arizona, and an M.F.A. in playwriting at Brooklyn College . Her awards include fellowships in poetry and playwriting from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, NYFA, and the NEA. Joan is a visiting poet in the Columbia College English Department for Spring 2006.
- top
- Kurt Brown Poetry Reading, February 14
Columbia College Concert Hall, 1014 South Michigan (5:30pm) 
Kurt Brown is founding director of the Aspen Writers' Conference, now in its 29th year, founding director of Writers' Conferences & Centers (a national association of directors) now in its 15th year, past editor of Aspen Anthology and past President of the Aspen Writers' Foundation. He teaches poetry workshops and craft classes at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and was recently the McEver Visiting Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia . 
He is the editor of three annuals: The True Subject, Graywolf Press (1994),Writing it Down for James, Beacon Press (1995), and Facing the Lion, Beacon Press (1996) which gather outstanding lectures from writers' conferences and festivals as part of the Writers on Life & Craft Series. He is also the editor of Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and their cars (1994),Verse & Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics (1998), and co-editor with his wife, poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, of Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants & Bars (1997), all from Milkweed Editions. In addition, he is the editor of The Measured Word: On Poetry & Science, from the University of Georgia Press in 2001, and a co-editor of the tribute anthology for the late William Matthews, Blues for Bill, published by University of Akron Press in 2005.
He is the author of five chapbooks: The Lance & Rita Poems, which won the Sound Post Press competition in Columbia, Missouri (1994); Recension of the Biblical Watchdog, which won the Anamnesis Poetry Chapbook Competition (1997); A Voice in the Garden: Poems of Sandor T?dj?ck published by Beyond Baroque Literary / Arts Center (1998); Mammal News, Pudding House Press (2000); and Fables from the Ark, which won the Woodland Press Poetry Chapbook Competition (2002).
His first full-length collection of poems, Return of the Prodigals, was published by Four Way Books in 1999. A second collection, More Things in Heaven and Earth, was published by Four Way Books in 2002. A third collection, Fables from the Ark, which won the 2003 Custom Words Prize, was published by WordTech, and a fourth, Future Ship, will appear from Story Line Press in 2005.- top
Action Books Panel Discussion, February 27
Concert Hall: 1014 South Michigan (5:30pm) - Arielle Greenberg, Joyelle McSweeney, Lara Glenum, and Johannes Gorannson will participate.
Arielle Greenberg is the author of My Kafka Century (Action Books, 2005) and Given (Verse, 2002) and the chapbook Farther Down: Songs from the Allergy Trials (New Michigan Press, 2003). Her poems were featured in Best American Poetry 2004 and 2005, and she is co-editing, with Rachel Zucker, an anthology of women poets' essays on mentorship, forthcoming from Wesleyan. She is a co-editor of the literary magazine Court Green and poetry editor of Black Clock, and teaches at Columbia College Chicago. 
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of The Red Bird (2002) and The Commandrine and Other Poems (2004), both from Fence. She is a staff critic for The Constant Critic and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Alabama . With Johannes Goransson, she publishes Action Books, a press for poetry that goes too far (www.actionbooks.org). 
Lara Glenum was raised in the gothic South. She studied for her M.A. in English at the University of Chicago and received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The University of Virginia. In 2000, she received a Fulbright fellowship to Prague to translate 20th C. Czech poetry. At present, she teaches among the kudzu vines at The University of Georgia, where she is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Modernism and the Historical Avant-Garde, post-modern aesthetics, and theories of the sublime and the grotesque. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Conjunctions, New American Writing, Denver Quarterly, Fence, American Letters & Commentary, and elsewhere. 
Johanes Gorranson grew up in Sweden and has lived in the United States for nearly twenty years. He recieved his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers ' Workshop and is the co-founder of Action Books, which published his "Remainland: Selected Poems of Aase Berg:. He has published translations of Swedish poet, Ann Jaderlund and the Russian born Modernist Henry Parland." His own poems can be found in various journals and anthologies.
- top
- Terrance Hayes and Tim Seibles Poetry Reading, March 29
Collins Hall, 624 South Michigan, Room 602 (5:30pm) 
Terrance Hayes is the author of Hip Logic (Penguin 2002) and Muscular Music (Tia Chucha Press, 1999) and has been a recipient of many honors including a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series selection, a Pushcart Prize, a Best American Poetry selection, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Wind in a Box, his third collection, is forthcoming from Penguin in 2006. He is an Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . 
Tim Seibles was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1955. He is the author of several books of poems including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock and, most recently, Buffalo Head Solos--each published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Press. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts fellow and has been a writing fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts . He also received an Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City . His work has been featured in anthologies such as Humor Me, Role Call, Outsiders, and The Poets' Grimm. He has been a workshop leader for Cave Canem-- a retreat for African American writers-- and for the Zora Neale Hurston-Richard Wright Foundation. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is a member of Old Dominion University 's English Department and MFA in Writing faculty.
- top
- 7th Annual Columbia College Citywide Undergraduate Poetry Festival, April 6
Columbia College Ferguson Theater, 600 South Michigan (5:30pm) - The Columbia College Chicago Citywide Undergraduate Poetry Festival brings together 11 poets from Chicago-area colleges and universities to read their work. This year's schools include Columbia College Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University, DePaul University, Loyola University, National-Louis University, Northeastern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, University of Illinois-Chicago, and University of Chicago. A reception follows the reading. The reading is free and open to the public. For more information, call 312.344.8138.
- top
- Harryette Mullen and Jean Valentine Poetry Reading, April 19
Ferguson Theater, 600 South Michigan, First floor (6:30pm) 
Harryette Mullen's poems, short stories, and essays have been published widely and reprinted in over 40 anthologies. Her poetry is included in the latest edition of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature and has been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Bulgarian, and Swedish. She is the author of six poetry books, most recently Blues Baby (Bucknell, 2002) and Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California, 2002). The latter was a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2004 she received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts and in 2005 she was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She was born in Alabama, grew up in Texas, and now lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches at UCLA. 
Jean Valentine is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Door in the Mountain, New & Collected Poems (Wesleyan 2004) for which she received The National Book Award in poetry for 2004. Valentine graduated from Radcliffe College, has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, NYU and Columbia University, and lives and works in New York City
- top
- COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW Poetry Reading, May 4
Collins Hall, 624 South Michigan , Room 602 (5:30pm) - Contributors to this year's COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW, now in its 19th year as the English Department's student-edited, nationally distributed poetry magazine, will read their work. The winners of the 2006 Eileen Lannan Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, will also be announced.
- top