Acclaimed poets James Cihlar and William Reichard read a selection of their poetry on Tuesday, February 23 at 3:30 p.m. in the Carleton College Gould Library Athenaeum. Both authors hail from St. Paul, and will be signing copies of their poetry collections following the reading. This event is free and open to the public.
Professor and poet William Reichard has authored four collections of poetry: This Brightness (Mid-List Press, 2007), How To (Mid-List Press, 2003), An Alchemy in the Bones (New Rivers Press, 1999), and the forthcoming Sin Eater, which will be available this April. How To was one of five finalists for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and An Alchemy in the Bones won a Minnesota Voices Prize, and was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, as was This Brightness. Reichard has also published a chapbook, To Be Quietly Spoken (Frith Press, 2001) and revised and edited the award-winning memoir The Evening Crowd at Kirmser's: A Gay Life in the 1940's (University of Minnesota Press, 2003) by the late Ricardo Brown. He is currently a program director and faculty member for the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA), where he teaches two seminars on the intersections of art, literature, and social justice. He holds a PhD in Contemporary American Literature and an MA in Creative Writing, both from the University of Minnesota.
James Cihlar has also worked in publishing and education for many years. He earned his BA in English from the University of Iowa, and his MA and PhD from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point as well as at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. His book, Undoing (Little Pear Press, 2008), received high critical praise, and the title poem was featured on Verse Daily for September 19, 2008. His poems have been featured in a variety of publications, including Prairie Schooner, Minnesota Monthly, Northeast, The James White Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Quercus, and Wisconsin River Valley Journal. He has been anthologized in Regrets Only, Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother, Nebraska Presence, and White Ink. In 2000, he won a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Poetry.
Copies of the authors’ books will be available at the event as well as prior to the event in the Carleton Bookstore. For more information, call the Bookstore at (507) 222-4153. The Athenaeum is located in the Laurence McKinley Gould Library on Carleton College’s campus. For more information about this event, please contact csoule@carleton.edu.
