The Richard Blanco Visiting Writers Program Will Welcome Award-Winning Performance Poet Patricia Smith to Gould’s Bingham Auditorium on April 26, 2016
© Beowulf Sheehan
Bethel, Maine — Gould Academy is excited to welcome award-winning performance poet, recipient of the Bobbitt national Prize for Poetry, and National Book Award Finalist, Patricia Smith to its stage and classrooms on April 26, 2016.
Part of the Richard Blanco Visiting Writers Program and Retreat, Smith’s visit will include a free public poetry reading at 7:30 p.m. in Bingham Auditorium followed by a book signing reception.
About Patricia Smith: Patricia Smith is the author of six critically-acknowledged volumes of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, which was awarded the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, was the winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy American Poets, and was a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series winner (all from Coffee House Press); Close to Death and Big Towns, Big Talk (both from Zoland Books), and Life According to Motown, just released in a special 20th anniversary edition (Tia Chucha Press). She also edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. Her contribution to the that anthology, the story “When They Are Done With Us,” won an award from Mystery Writers of America and was published in Best American Mystery Stories. She is a Cave Canem faculty member, a professor of English at CUNY/College of Staten Island and a faculty member of the Sierra Nevada MFA program.
About the Richard Blanco Visiting Writers Program and Retreat: Rather than seeing writing as a celebrated art from the past, the Richard Blanco Visiting Writers Program and Retreat aims to engage students with contemporary writers, helping to create new generations of readers and appreciators of poetry.
While on campus visiting writers work with Gould Academy students and faculty through classroom visits and workshops, giving them the opportunity to connect with and learn from a living artist. Writers are provided a stipend and a two-week stay in Mr. Blanco’s private Bethel, Maine cottage.
Through public readings and events, the program also exposes the larger community and region to great contemporary writers.
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