Contact: Sasha Steinberg
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Award-winning, North Carolina-based educator and poet Tina Barr will deliver a public reading Tuesday [Sept. 13] at Mississippi State.
Free to all, Barr’s presentation begins at 7 p.m. in Colvard Student Union’s third-floor Fowlkes Auditorium. A public reception and book signing will follow.
Barr also will visit classes and interact with students during her campus visit, which is sponsored by the MSU Department of English’s Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series.
Established through an endowment from widow Alice Carol Caldwell and family, the literary series serves as a memorial to Tutweiler native Price Caldwell (1940-2015), who served for more than 20 years as an associate professor of English at MSU. He also founded and directed the university’s creative writing program, along with serving as president and vice president for the Southern Literary Festival organization.
Barr, who currently teaches at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, developed a fascination with myth and fairy tales during her early years on the north shore of Long Island, New York. She holds a bachelor of arts from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, as well as a master’s in creative writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
In the 1980s, Barr began teaching poetry at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she earned master’s and doctoral degrees in English literature in 1987 and 1995, respectively. She later taught at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia before going on to serve as associate professor and creative writing program director at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
Author of “Kaleidoscope” (Iris Press, 2015), Barr now is working on her third full-length poetry collection, which incorporates mythic, Biblical and folk references. For more biographical information, visit www.tinabarr.com.
Additional information about Barr’s visit may be obtained from Michael Kardos, MSU associate professor of English and creative writing co-director, at 662-325-3644 and MKardos@english.msstate.edu.
Learn more about MSU’s Department of English at www.english.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.