Reading Series 2017/18
THE STAN AND TOM WICK POETRY PRIZE READING
WITH Angie Estes & Christine Gosnay
7:30 pm
 | Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017
College of Architecture & Environmental Design, Room 120
ANGIE ESTES is the author of five books, most recently ·¡²Ô³¦³ó²¹²Ô³Ùé±ð (Oberlin College Press, 2013), winner of the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize. Her previous book, Tryst (Oberlin, 2009), was selected as one of two finalists for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Chez Nous, also from Oberlin, appeared in 2005, and her second book, Voice-Over (Oberlin, 2002), won the 2001 field Poetry Prize and was also awarded the 2001 Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Her first book, The Uses of Passion (1995), was the winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize. The recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, she has also received fellowships, grants, and residencies from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the California Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, and the Ohio Arts Council. She is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Ashland University.
CHRISTINE GOSNAY was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and has lived most recently in Israel and California. Her first book of poems, Even Years (Â鶹´«Ã½ Press, 2017), won the 2016 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have been selected for publication in poetry, The Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Redivider, Beloit Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, The Rumpus, Third Coast, Sixth Finch, and other magazines.
KENT CREATIVITY FESTIVAL
Presented by the City of Kent in collaboration with Â鶹´«Ã½
11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
 | Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017
Lester A. Lefton Esplanade outside of the May Prentice House
The Kent community invites you to join us for the second Kent Creativity Festival! This will be an opportunity for people of all ages and skill levels to come together to create, share and explore the creation of all kinds of art. The event will take place on Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Lester A. Lefton Esplanade outside of the May Prentice House and the Wick Poetry Center.
Maggie Anderson Poetry Reading
In collaboration with NEOMFA
7:30 p.m.
 | Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017
in the Kiva Auditorium
MAGGIE ANDERSON is the author of five books of poems including Dear All, Windfall: New and Selected Poems, A Space Filled with Moving, and Cold Comfort. Anderson has also co-edited several poetry anthologies, including A Gathering of Poets and Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry About School. Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as fellowships from the Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania councils on the arts. She served as the director of the Northeast Ohio MFA in Creative Writing (NEOMFA) from 2006-2009. The founding director of the Wick Poetry Center and of the Wick Poetry Series of the Â鶹´«Ã½ Press, Anderson is Professor Emerita of English at Â鶹´«Ã½ and now lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
WORLD POETRY READING - This reading has been rescheduled for the fall 2018 semester
Kent State international students and staff/faculty members from 15 different countries will share poems they love from their own cultures facilitating a global conversation through the intimate and inclusive voice of poetry.
Kate Daniels Workshop & POETRY READING
Workshop: 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM | Register at
Poetry Reading: 7 PM | Kent United Church of Christ (1400 E. Main St. Kent, OH 44240)
Poet and Vanderbilt University professor Kate Daniels will offer a writing and discussion group to address the opioid crisis facing individuals and their loved ones and will read from her new book of poems which addresses her son’s heroin addiction and her journey to cope with that struggle. Sponsored by Portage Medical Center Foundation at UH Portage Medical Center and the Kent United Church of Christ in collaboration with the Wick Poetry Center. Free and open to all.
Ohio Chapbook Reading
with Hannah Stephenson
7:30 pm | Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Kent Student Center, Room 306 AB
HANNAH STEPHENSON is a poet, editor, and teacher living in Columbus, Ohio (where she also runs Paging Columbus, a literary event series). She is the author of Cadence; In the Kettle, The Shriek; and series Co-Editor of New Poetry from the Midwest. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, 32 Poems, Vela, The Journal, and Poetry Daily. You can visit her online at The Storialist (www.thestorialist.com).
MAJ Ragain poetry reading
7:30 pm | Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Kent Student Center, Room 306 ABC
MAJ RAGAIN, on a July sunrise in 1969, drove into Kent, Ohio, and called it home. He and his wife LuAnn live close to the Cuyahoga river, a few blocks south of Standing Rock, that lode stone. He has taught at Â鶹´«Ã½ in each of the past six decades. The new collection of poems Clouds Pile Up in the North is his sixth book. It is dedicated to the Kent community, the midwife of these poems, to whom they finally belong.
Q&A with Natasha Trethewey
Co-sponsored by the University Libraries
1:00 pm | Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Garden Room | 1st Floor in the University Libraries (former Quiet Study Area)
7th ANNUAL U.S. POET LAUREATE READING
featuring Natasha Trethewey
Co-sponsored by the University Libraries, the Honors College, and the English Department
7:30 pm | Wednesday, April 18, 2018
in the Kiva
NATASHA TRETHEWEY served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of four collections of poetry, Thrall (2012), Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000) which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Emory University she is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.