2005-06 Reading Series

Jane Alison
Jane Alison

Thursday | Sept. 29, 2005 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham

In her debut novel, The Love-Artist, Jane Alison imagined the poet Ovid’s infatuation with his muse Xenia, telling the story in a voice the New York Times called “wonderfully seductive…at once modern and archaic, lyrical and potent.” Critically acclaimed novels The Marriage of the Sea and Natives and Exotics reaffirm that Alison is a writer to watch.

Reading sponsored by the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series Fund.


Anna Castillo
Ana Castillo

Thursday | Oct. 6, 2005 | 7:30 p.m. | Great Hall

Poet, novelist and essayist Ana Castillo, author of 17 books including the novels Peel My Love Like an Onion and So Far From God, and the essay collection Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma, has been widely anthologized in English and in translation. Watercolor Women/Opaque Men: A Novel in Verse is forthcoming in the fall of 2005.

Reading sponsored by the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.


Robert Fagles
Robert Fagles

Tuesday | Oct. 25, 2005 | 7:30 p.m. | Great Hall

The chorus of praise greeting Robert Fagles’ verse translations includes an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for The Odyssey and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets for The Iliad. He is currently at work on a new translation of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.


John Hollander
John Hollander

Tuesday | Nov. 8, 2005 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham

Through 18 books of poetry and eight books of criticism, John Hollander has built a reputation for wit and deep learning. Recipient of many honors including the Bollingen Prize in Poetry and a MacArthur Fellowship, Hollander is the author, most recently, of Picture Window.

Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.


Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon

Friday | Feb. 3, 2006 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham

Paul Muldoon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poetry, Moy Sand and Gravel, “reveals one of the English-speaking world’s most acclaimed poets still at the top of his slippery, virtuosic game” (Publisher’s Weekly). Muldoon’s most recent works include Hay, Poems 1968-1998, and The Annals of Chile, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Reading sponsored by a gift from Florence Newman Trefethen ’43, the Whitehill-Linn Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.


Carol Muske-Dukes
Carol Muske-Dukes

Friday | Feb. 24, 2006 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham

Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of three novels and seven books of poetry, including Sparrow, a National Book Award finalist. Her widely anthologized work has appeared in The Best American Poems, and has received numerous awards, including the Witter/Bynner Award from the Library of Congress and several Pushcart Prizes.

Reading sponsored by a gift from Florence Newman Trefethen ’43, the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.


Sonja Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez

Friday | April 7, 2006 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham

Maya Angelou called award-winning poet, activist and scholar Sonia Sanchez “a lion in literature’s forest.” Sanchez is the author of 13 books, including Does Your House Have Lions? (nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award) and, most recently, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems.

Reading sponsored by a gift from Florence Newman Trefethen ’43, the Lucy Martin Donnelly Women Writers Series Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.


Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka

Wednesday | April 19, 2006 | 7:30 p.m. | Great Hall

The first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka “has earned a reputation as the conscience of Nigeria” (Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York Times). Novelist, playwright, critic, poet and political activist Soyinka follows his memoir Ake: The Years of Childhood with You Must Set Forth at Dawn, an account of his tumultuous adulthood.

Reading sponsored by the Whitehill-Linn Fund.


Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart

Friday | April 21, 2006 | 7:30 p.m. | Ely Room, Wyndham

Jurors for the prestigious Wallace Stevens Award called Frank Bidart “one of the great poets of our time.” His previous books include Desire (a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize nominee) and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90. His new book, Star Dust, incorporates poems from Music Like Dirt, Bidart’s earlier work and the first chapbook to be named a Pulitzer finalist.

Reading sponsored by a gift from Florence Newman Trefethen ’43, the Whitehill-Linn Fund and the Marianne Moore Fund for the Study of Poetry.