News Article

Poet Donald Revell
Photo Credit: Francois Camoin

Gonzaga English Associate Professor Tod Marshall, organizer of the series, said a highly competitive $7,500 Humanities Washington grant has provided a substantial increase to the series’ budget, enabling a greater variety of prolific poets.

Already, the series has featured Herman Asarnow (Sept. 18) and after Revell includes Joy Harjo, Bharati Mukherjee, Daniel Butterworth, and Robert Hass, a former Poet Laureate of the United States. All readings are free and open to the public.

Revell , a graduate of the State University of New York (SUNY) in Binghamton and SUNY in Buffalo, is an English professor and director of creative writing at the University of Utah. He has written several volumes of poetry, including: “My Mojave,” “Arcady,” “The Gaza of Winter” and “From the Abandoned Cities.” Among his honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and the Gertrude Stein Award. To learn more about Revell, visit the following Web site. 

Gonzaga’s English department has sponsored several well-known writers and poets in recent years. The grant “makes this year’s line-up quite exceptional,” said Marshall, who aims to transform the series into a vibrant Eastern Washington cultural event that advances Gonzaga’s mission-oriented efforts to educate the whole person and offer the community important cultural opportunities in the humanities.

Other sponsors of the series this year include the GU English department, Gonzaga’s offices of intercultural relations, academic vice president, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The lineup for the remainder of the 2007-2008 Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series is as follows:

• Joy Harjo: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 14, Globe Room, Cataldo Hall.
• Bharati Mukherjee: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 6 (2008) Globe Room, Cataldo Hall.
• Robert Hass: 7:30 p.m., Monday, Feb. 25, (2008), Globe Room, Cataldo Hall.
• Daniel Butterworth: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 26 (2008) Globe Room, Cataldo Hall.

Asarnow, who received a doctorate from the University of Denver in 1981, authored “Glass Bottom Boat.” His poetry and essays have appeared in such magazines as The Southern Review, North Dakota Quarterly and West Branch. In 2005, Asarnow was awarded a residency at The Ragdale Foundation. He is an English professor at the University of Portland. For more information about Asarnow, visit his Web site.

Harjo, a poet, musician and artist, is a full member of the Muscogee Creek Tribe. She has written several volumes of poetry, including “ What Moon Drove Me to This , ” “ She Had Some Horses” and “ The Woman Who Fell from the Sky.” She plays the saxophone in her band, Poetic Justice, and teaches English at the University of New Mexico. Harjo has received many awards for her work, including the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the American Indian Distinguished Achievement Award. For more information about Harjo, visit her Web site.

Mukherjee, who teaches at University of California-Berkeley, earned her doctorate at the University of Iowa. The author calls herself “an American of Bengali-Indian origin,” having grown up in India, Europe, Canada and the United States. Mukherjee has written several novels, including “The Tiger’s Daughter,” “Jasmine” and “The Tree Bride,” as well as a memoir, “Days and Nights in Calcutta.” She often writes about immigration and the experience of female Asian immigrants in the United States and Canada. For more information, visit a Web site about Mukherjee’s work.

Hass, who earned his doctorate from Stanford University, served as Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-97). As Poet Laureate, he worked to battle American illiteracy. He has written four books of poetry, including “Sun Under Wood: New Poems,” “Human Wishes,” “Praise” and “Field Guide,” which was selected for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Hass is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. To learn more about Hass, visit the following Web site.

Butterworth, associate professor of English at Gonzaga, earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written one book of poetry, “The Radium Watch Dial Painters,” as well as a nonfiction work, “Waiting for Rain: A Farmer’s Story,” the biography of farmer Archie Clare. His academic interests lie in contemporary and romantic literature and creative writing.

For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Tod Marshall at (509) 323-6681 or via e-mail.