Poet Denise Dumahel of MFA Faculty to Give Reading, Book Signing
Converse College and Hub City Bookshop will feature award-winning poet Denise Duhamel, a member of the Converse College Low-Residency MFA faculty, for two events on Wednesday, March 7. Duhamel will give a talk, “Sharon Olds and Ai: The Influence of Intimacy and Persona,” at the Bookshop at 5:00 pm. She will give a reading in the Bain Room of Wilson Hall at Converse at 8:00 pm, with a reception and book-signing held before the reading at 7:30 pm. Hub City Bookshop will have copies of Duhamel’s books available for purchase at the reading. Admission to the events is free of charge.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent books are Ka-Ching! (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005), Mille et un Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005); Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001); The Star-Spangled Banner (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and Kinky (Orchises Press, 1997). A bilingual edition of her poems, Afortunada de mí (Lucky Me), translated into Spanish by Dagmar Buchholz and David Gonzalez, came out in 2008 with Bartleby Editores (Madrid.) Her work has been anthologized widely, including several issues of The Best American Poetry. She is a recipient of many national and international awards for her poetry, including an NEA Fellowship, and her work has also been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Bill Moyers’s PBS poetry special Fooling with Words. In addition to teaching in the Converse College Low-Residency MFA, she is a professor at Florida International University in Miami.
The poet Karla Huston in writing about Duhamel observed, “Her poems speak with a wild irreverence. Duhamel experiments with form and subject, creating poetry that challenges the reader’s notion of what poetry should be. She presents what poetry could be as she fully engages pop culture, the joys and horrors of it, while maintaining the ability to poke fun at our foibles-and make us think.”
For more information, contact Rick Mulkey, director of the creative writing program at Converse, at rick.mulkey@converse.edu.