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Award-winning poet Joy Harjo will read from her work at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 14, in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room at Gonzaga University. The event, sponsored in part by a Humanities Washington grant, is free and open to the public and is part of the Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series.
Poet Joy Harjo will read at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 14 in the Cataldo Hall, Globe Room at Gonzaga University. Photo by Paul Abdoo
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The highly competitive grant, which totals $7,500, has provided a substantial increase to the Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series, which is now able to bring a greater variety of poets and writers to the University than ever before. The series has already featured poets Herman Asarnow and Donald Revell and will feature Bharati Mukherjee, Daniel Butterworth, and Robert Hass, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, in spring semester.
Harjo, a poet, musician, editor and artist, is a full member of the Muscogee Creek Tribe. She has written several volumes of poetry, including “The Last Song,” “What Moon Drove Me to This,” “She Had Some Horses,” “Secrets from the Center of the World,” “In Mad Love and War,” and “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky.” She plays the saxophone in Poetic Justice, a band that combines music with poetry, and teaches in the English department at the University of New Mexico.
Harjo has received many awards for her work, including the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, and the American Indian Distinguished Achievement Award, as well as other grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1978. To learn more about Harjo, visit her Web site.
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:
* 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.
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 the following Web site about Mukherjee’s work.
Hass, who earned a doctorate from Stanford University, served as Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997). 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 degree and doctorate 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. Visit the following Web page to view or download the poster for the Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series.
For more information, contact Tod Marshall at (509) 323-6681 or via e-mail.
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