Contact: Maridith Geuder
Two Mississippi State faculty members will lead a Sept. 25 public program on contemporary literature while aiding the university's English department.
Poet Richard J. Lyons and fiction writer Becky E. Hagenston will read from their works during an 8-10 p.m. appearance at the State Theater in downtown Starkville. Proceeds from a $3 cover charge will go toward the department's creative writing program.
The event also will include book signings by the two and an open-microphone opportunity for audience members who wish to read from their own works.
Located at 217 Main Street, the theater is a part of the International Bistro restaurant, sponsor of the event.
Lyons, an assistant professor and creative writing director, has published poems in Paris Review, The New Republic and other national magazines. His first book, "These Modern Nights" (1988), was selected as a Devins Award Winner in the University of Missouri Press Breakthrough Series. His second collection, "Hours of the Cardinal" (2000), was selected for the James Dickey Contemporary Poetry Series.
Hagenston, also an assistant professor, has been featured in TriQuarterly, Witness and Southern Review. Her work also has appeared in the 1996 O. Henry Prize Anthology and a collection of stories, "A Gram of Mars" (1999), won Saranbade Books' Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.
Lyons holds a doctorate from the University of Houston; Hagenston, a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona.
For more information on the program, telephone Hagenston at (662) 325-2348.