Contact: Maridith Geuder
William Olsen and Nancy Eimers
Award-winning poets Nancy Eimers and William Olsen will lead two public programs during their Feb. 25 visit to Mississippi State University.
Headlining the English department's first presentation of its 2002 Visiting Writers Series, the creative writing professors are husband and wife who both teach at Western Michigan University and Vermont College.
A 4-5 p.m. question-and-answer session in 407 Lee Hall will provide an informal introduction for the two. At 8 p.m., they will read from their works at a gathering in the Colvard Union small auditorium.
Author of the book-length "Destroying Angel" (1991) and "No Moon" (1997), Eimers also has published widely in poetry journals and anthologies, including the prestigious Paris Review. Her work has been recognized with two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Purdue University Press's Verna Emery Prize and a Whiting Writers Award that recognizes promising emerging writers.
Olsen is author of "The Hand of God and a Few Bright Flowers" (1998), a National Poetry Series Competition winner being reissued this year by the Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series. He also has written "Vision of a Storm Cloud" (1996) and the recently released "Troubled Lights," both published by Triquarterly Books.
A National Endowment for the Arts fellowship winner, Olsen also has been featured in The New Republic, Paris Review and Southern Review, among others.
The English department's Creative Writing Enhancement Fund, with support from Paul and Bernadette Lyons, is a co-sponsor of the Visiting Writers Series. A second program of the 2002 season will take place in late March.
For more information, telephone Richard J. Lyons, the department's director of creative writing, at (662) 325-2362.