Sunday, May 22, 2011

Chin Music poetry June 2 at 7 pm.

Please join us for our upcoming Chin Music season finale featuring three fine poets: Marilyn Nelson, Ross Gay, and James Best. Series curated by Bryan Patrick Miller.

FEATURED POETS

Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of fourteen books and five chapbooks. Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Fortune’s Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Her young adult book, A Wreath For Emmett Till, won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut; was (2004-2010) founder/director and host of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small non-profit writers' colony; and held the office of Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

Ross Gay’s books of poems include Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006) and Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, January 2011). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, MARGIE, Ploughshares and many other magazines. He has also, with the artist Kimberly Thomas, collaborated on several artists’ books: The Cold Loop, BRN2HNT and The Bullet. He is an editor with the chapbook press Q Avenue, whose recently published books include Chromosomory by Layli Long Soldier, Amigos by Matthew Dickman, Ad Hoc by Chris Mattingly, and Dolly by Kimberly Thomas and Simone White. Ross Gay is also on the board of directors of the Bloomington Community Orchard.

James Best lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife, Valerie, and their terminally ill bonsai, Moonlight Graham. Besides poetry, he writes for television and humor websites. He has poems published or forthcoming in RATTLE, Cold Mountain Review, South Carolina Review, decomP Magazine, Limestone and the anthology, Fire in the Pasture, due out this summer. Also this summer you can see a poem of his on a girl's t-shirt at American Eagle. He knows this calculated maneuver into mainstream fashion will bring him the large audience of tweens every poet craves.

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