Media Advisory

What: Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center’s “Welcoming First Book Authors and Judges,” an event honoring past First Book winners and judges.

Who:

First Book winners:

Honoree Jeffers, associate professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, won the 1999 Stan and Tom Wick Prize for Poetry for “The Gospel of Barbecue.”

Richard Tayson’s first book of poetry, “The Apprentice of Fever,” won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize in 1997. His second book of poems, “The World Underneath,” is now available from Kent State University Press.

First Book judges:

Alicia Ostriker is a professor emerita from Rutgers University and a faculty member of the New England College Low-Residency Poetry MFA Program.

Maggie Anderson is the director of the Wick program and the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. She has been instrumental in choosing First Book judges.

When/Where: Nov. 17: “Poems of the Body” a panel discussion with Jeffers, Tayson, Ostriker and Anderson. 
Room 306, Kent Student Center, 2 p.m.
Poetry reading with Jeffers and Anderson, Kiva, 8 p.m.

Nov. 18: “Women in the Jewish Bible” a talk by Ostriker, Wick Poetry 
Corner of the Library. 10 a.m.
Poetry reading with Ostriker and Tayson, Kiva, 8 p.m.

Information: For more information about the Wick Poetry Reading Series and its 25th anniversary celebration this year, contact the Wick Poetry Center at 330-672-2067 or visit its Web site at http://dept.kent.edu/wick. 

Contact: Katie Trook, 330-256-1950
David Hassler, 330-672-1769