Evening Benefits the NYU/Goldwater Hospital Writing Project
On Monday, April 17, at 7:45 p.m., New York University’s Creative Writing Program will host an award ceremony and reading to benefit the NYU/Goldwater Hospital Writing Project. Tomas Tranströmer, whose many awards and honors include the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Bonnier Award for Poetry, will receive the seventh annual Jean Kennedy Smith NYU Creative Writing Award of Distinction. Distinguished poet Robert Bly will introduce Tranströmer.
The event takes place in NYU’s Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge, 40 Washington Square South; voluntary donations are requested at the door. For further information the public may call 212.998.8816.
The award ceremony will include a reading by writers from the NYU/Goldwater Writing Project known as the Golden Writers; the presentation of the award; and a reading by Bly, Tranströmer’s main translator, and poet and NYU Professor Sharon Olds of Tranströmer’s works. The project provides writing workshops for residents of Coler Goldwater, a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged. The workshop teachers are graduate students in NYU’s Creative Writing Program, and the proceeds of this benefit reading will provide stipend support for these students as well as help underwrite other program expenses.
Tranströmer’s books of poetry include The Half-Finished Heaven, New Collected Poems, For the Living and the Dead, Baltics, and Windows and Stones, a runner-up for the National Book Award for translation. His work has been translated into 30 languages, and he has read at many American universities, often with his friend and fellow poet Bly. He is also a psychologist and has worked with juvenile offenders, the disabled, and substance abusers.
The next event in the NYU Creative Writing Program Spring Reading Series is on April 27 and will celebrate the poetry of the Palestinian author Mahmoud Darwish.
The NYU Creative Writing Program, with permanent faculty members E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall, Breyten Breytenbach, Philip Levine, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Sharon Olds, has distinguished itself for over three decades as a leading national center for the study of literature and writing. The Creative Writing Program Director is Melissa Hammerle. The Reading Series, sponsored in cooperation with the NYU Book Centers and the Fales Collection at NYU, is a vital component of the Writing Program, bringing both established and new writers to NYU.
The NYU Creative Writing Program Reading Series is made possible by generous support from the Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund, established in The New York Community Trust by the founders of the Reader’s Digest Association. Additional support is provided by Robert E. Holmes.