Award-winning poets Yusef Komunyakaa and Sharon Olds will read from their works on Thursday, October 21, 7 p.m. at New York University’s Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South. The event, which is free and open to the public, is the second in the reading series presented by the NYU Creative Writing Program in cooperation with the NYU Book Centers.
Komunyakaa, recipient of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems 1977-1989 and a finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award, has published nine books of poetry. His latest book of poems is Thieves of Paradise; and alongside jazz musician John Tchicai and ensemble, he reads his poems on the CD, Love Notes from the Madhouse. Komunyakaa is a professor in the Council of the Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.
Olds, professor and permanent faculty member in the NYU Creative Writing Program, will read from her new book of poems Blood, Tin, Straw. Her first book Satan Says received the San Francisco Poetry Center Award, and her second book The Dead and the Living was both the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1983 and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1997, Olds received the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award; and in 1998, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate by Governor George Pataki.
The next reading in the series will be the Writers Harvest National Reading on October 28, featuring members of the NYU Creative Writing Program faculty: Nicholas Christopher, Cornelius Eady, Eamon Grennan, Philip Levine, Paule Marshall, and Jean Valentine.
The NYU Creative Writing Program, with permanent faculty members E.L. Doctorow, Galway Kinnell, Paule Marshall, and Sharon Olds, has distinguished itself for two decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The Reading Series is a vital component of the Writing Program, bringing together both established and new writers to NYU.