Gregory Pardlo Reads at Next Writers Speak
Stony Brook Southampton continues their high-profile lineup of guest speakers with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gregory Pardlo at the March 9 installment of Writers Speak Wednesdays, a semester-long event which brings student body and professional writers together for engaging and educational talks that are also open to the public.
The previous Writers Speak event on February 10 featured Paris Review editor Lorin Stein, and former editor at The New Yorker Daniel Menaker, and this upcoming Writers Speak will be sure to hold its momentum with Pardlo visiting the campus as the newest guest speaker.
Pardlo won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2015 for his collection Digest (Four Way Books), which Pulitzer judges praised as “clear-voiced poems that bring readers the news from 21st century America, rich with thought, ideas and histories public and private.” The same collection was also a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and shortlisted for the 2015 NAACP Image Award. Pardlo’s first collection, Totem, was selected in 2007 for the APR/Honickman Prize. His poetry has been featured in such publications as The Nation, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry and Best American Poetry among others. Pardlo is currently a teacher at Rutgers University-Camden for the MFA Creative Writing Program.
Writers Speak Wednesdays is a free program that begins with a reception at 6:30 p.m. Readings start at 7 p.m., followed by a Q&A session and a book signing at the end. Upcoming Writers Speak Wednesdays will feature MFA in Creative Writing Faculty Ursula Hegi, Susan Scarf Merrell, Roger Rosenblatt, Julie Sheehan, and Lou Ann Walker on March 9; novelist Terese Svoboda with MFA in Creative Writing Director and poet Julie Sheehan on March 23; Robert MacNeil with Roger Rosenblatt on April 6; Erica Jong on April 27; and student readings on May 4 for writers enrolled in Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program.
For more info, call 631-632-5030 or visit stonybrook.edu/mfa.