Date: Oct 17, 2008

HOFSTRA'S "GREAT WRITERS, GREAT READINGS" SERIES TO NEXT FEATURE POET MOLLY PEACOCK

Tuesday, November 18, 2008, at 7 p.m.; Monroe Lecture Center Theater, California Avenue, South Campus

Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York ... Renowned poet Molly Peacock will be the featured speaker in the next installment of Hofstra University’s “Great Writers, Great Readings” series. Her reading will take place on Tuesday, November 18, at 7 p.m. at the Monroe Lecture Center Theater, located off of California Avenue on Hofstra’s South Campus.

This event is 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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Molly Peacock is the author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, both published by W.W. Norton and Company. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, as well as other leading literary journals. Widely anthologized, her poems appear in The Best of the Best American Poetry and The Oxford Book of American Poetry.

She is also the author of a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece, published by Riverhead Books, and the editor of a collection of essays on privacy, The Private I:  Privacy in a Public World published by Graywolf Press. Her essay “Passion Flowers in Winter” appears in The Best American Essays, 2007.  Other essays have appeared in Elle, House & Garden, Creative Nonfiction, New York Magazine, and O the Oprah Magazine.

As well as writing both poetry and literary nonfiction, Ms. Peacock is the writer/actor of a one-woman show in poems, The Shimmering Verge, which toured the U.S. and Canada, including an off-Broadway showcase. Former president of the Poetry Society of America, she was a co-creator of the Poetry in Motion program on New York City’s subways and buses. She then served as poet-in-residence at the American Poets’ Corner, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. 

Ms. Peacock has given readings throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain and has been poet-in-residence at Bucknell University, Elliston Poet at the University of Cincinnati, and Regents Poet at the University of California, Riverside. Among her honors are fellowships from the Danforth, Ingram Merrill and Woodrow Wilson Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, This year she holds a fellowship from the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center to write about 18th century flower collage artist Mrs. Mary Delany. Ms. Peacock serves on the Graduate Faculty of the Spalding University Brief Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.  Her Web site is: www.mollypeacock.org.

Future “Great Writers, Great Readings” events include:

Wednesday, February 11, 2009, at 11 a.m.
Deborah Eisenberg, acclaimed short story writer, whose works include Transactions in a Foreign Currency , Under the 82nd Airborne, All Around Atlantis and Twilight of the Superheroes.
Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Tuesday, March 3, 2009, at 7 p.m.
Paul Muldoon was described by The Times Literary Supplement as “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War,” He won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Moy Sand and Gravel (2002).
Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus
     
Wednesday, April 1, 2009, at 11 a.m.
Sarah Ruhl was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Clean House. Her newest work, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, was performed at Playwrights Horizons in March 2008 starring Mary-Louise Parker.
Location: Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus