Date: Oct 13, 2009

Hofstra's Fall 2009 "Great Writers, Great Readings" Series Continues with Poet Frank Bidart and Playwright Craig Lucas

November 4 and 18, Respectively; Free and Open to the Public

Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York ... Frank Bidart, one of the most significant poets of our time, and Craig Lucas, a two-time Obie Award-winning playwright, will participate in Hofstra’s “Great Writers, Great Readings” series in November 2009. Mr. Bidart will appear on Wednesday, November 4, at 7 p.m. at Monroe Lecture Center Theater, and Mr. Lucas will follow on Wednesday, November 18, at 11:15 a.m. at the Guthart Cultural Center Theater, which is located in the first floor of the Axinn Library. Both venues are on Hofstra University’s South Campus.

These events are free and open to the public. For information, please call (516) 463-5410.

“Great Writers, Great Readings” was launched by Hofstra University in recognition of the importance of writing and literature in a liberal arts education. In addition to a baccalaureate degree in English, Hofstra offers a Master of Arts in English and Creative Writing. The program’s faculty include eminent essayist Philip Lopate, writers Erik Brogger and Julia Markus and two Guggenheim Fellows: novelist Martha McPhee and poet Phillis Levin.

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About Frank Bidart:

Frank Bidart’s most recent full-length collections of poetry are Watching the Spring Festival, Star Dust, Desire, and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90. He won the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.

In 2007 Mr. Bidart was chosen as the winner of the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, awarded biennially by the Yale University Library. The Bollingen Prize was established in 1949 and recognizes the best book or the lifetime achievement of an American poet.

Additional honors include the Wallace Stevens Award, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation Writer’s Award, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America, and The Paris Review’s first Bernard F. Conners Prize for “The War of Vaslav Nijinsky” in 1981.

Mr. Bidart was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2003. He was educated at the University of California, Riverside, and Harvard. He currently teaches at Wellesley College, where he joined the faculty in 1972.

About Craig Lucas:

Craig Lucas’ plays include Missing Persons, Blue Window, Reckless, God’s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, Prayer for My Enemy and The Singing Forest.  He wrote the book for The Light in the Piazza; the musical Three Postcards; the libretto for the opera Orpheus in Love; and has recently completed the libretto for Two Boys, an opera with composer Nico Muhly, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. His new English adaptations include Brecht’s Galileo, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, and Strindberg’s Miss Julie. 

Mr. Lucas’ screenplays include Longtime Companion, The Secret Lives of Dentists, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless and The Dying Gaul, which he also directed. He directed the 2008 film Birds of America.  Onstage he directed Harry Kondoleon’s plays Saved or Destroyed (Obie Award for Best Director), Play Yourself, as well as his own play This Thing of Darkness (co-authored with David Schulner). 

His work has been seen on and off Broadway and at renowned theaters across the country. He has twice won the Obie Award for Best Play, and he has been nominated twice for a Tony Award and three times for the Drama Desk Award. Mr. Lucas serves as associate artistic director at the Intiman Theater in Seattle, and he is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild, SSDC and PEN America.

Related Link: Great Writers, Great Readings