Cynthia Huntington, Michael Collier and Cleopatra Mathis
Sunday, August 3rd 5:30 pm in the Main Gallery
Free and open to the public. Refreshments will follow. |
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Cynthia Huntington is a poet and memoirist, and professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. She has received grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, as well as two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her most recent book of poetry is Heavenly Bodies (2012), which was nominated for a National Book Award.
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Michael Collier grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, studied with William Meredith as an undergraduate at Connecticut College, and received his MFA from the University of Arizona in 1979.
He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Thomas Watson Fellowship. Michael Collier served as Maryland's Poet Laureate from 2001-2004. A former director of poetry programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Michael Collier joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1985. Currently, he directs the University's creative writing program.
As an editor and director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference since 1995, Collier has been an influential member of the writing and teaching community, saying in a blackbird interview about teaching poetry, "I think poetry does have this ability to help us deal with things that aren't black and white and make our thinking more subtle."
He is the editor of two acclaimed anthologies of poetry, The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry (1993) and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (2000). His own works include: The Folded Heart (1989); The Clasp (1986); The Neighbor (1995); The Ledge (2000), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Dark Wild Realm (2006); Make Us Wave Back (2007), a book of essays; and most recently, An Individual History (2012). Currently, he resides in Catonsville, Maryland, with his wife and two children. |
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Cleopatra Mathis was born and raised in Ruston, Louisiana, of Greek and Cherokee descent. Her first five books of poems were published by Sheep Meadow Press. A sixth collection of poems, White Sea, was published by Sarabande Books in 2005.
Cleopatra Mathis' work has appeared widely in anthologies, textbooks, magazines and journals, including The Best American Poetry, 2009, The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Tri-Quarterly, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry, The Extraordinary Tide: Poetry by American Women, The Practice of Poetry, and Best American Poetry: 2009. Various prizes for her work include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, in 1984 and 2003; the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poems in 2001; the Peter Lavin Award for Younger Poets from the Academy of American Poets; two Pushcart Prizes: 1980 and 2006; The Robert Frost Resident Poet Award; a 1981-82 Fellowship in Poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; The May Sarton Award; and Individual Artist Fellowships in Poetry from both the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the New Jersey State Arts Council. Most recently, she was the Poetry Fellow at the Dora Maar House in Menerbes, Provence, France, sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.
Cleopatra Mathis is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor of the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where she has directed the Creative Writing Program since 1982.
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A preview of coming readers and dates:
August 10: Novelist, Luis Alberto Urrea and poet, Alan Shapiro
August 24: Fiction writer, Tracy Winn and poet, Joan Landis
Books will be offered for sale by Sandy's Books and Bakery.
For more information about the Summer Reading Series, click here.
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BigTown Gallery
99 North Main Street
Rochester, VT 05767
Gallery Hours
Wed-Fri 10-5 Sat 12-5 Sun-Tues by appointment 
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