Poet Erin Belieu to speak for Writing Program Reading Series Jan. 24

Acclaimed poet Erin Belieu will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

The talk — part of The Writing Program’s fall Reading Series — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall, on the university’s Danforth Campus. Duncker Hall is located at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle, near the intersection of Brookings and Hoyt drives. For more information, call (314) 935-7130 or email dschuman@wustl.edu.

Belieu is the author of three collections, all published by Copper Canyon Press. The first, Infanta (1995), was chosen for The National Poetry Series and named one of the “best books” of the year by The National Book Critics Circle, Library Journal and The Washington Post Book World. Her second collection, One Above & One Below (2000), won the Midlands Author and Ohioana awards in poetry. Her most recent collection, Black Box (2006), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

“Titled after the flight-data recording devices analyzed in plane-crash investigations, Belieu’s forceful third collection examines the wreckage of interpersonal disaster, chiefly a nasty marital breakup,” notes Publishers Weekly. “Belieu is also interested in how emotional extremity makes shameless performers of us all, an observation dramatized in the book’s astonishing centerpiece, the longer poem “In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral.”

Belieu’s poems also have appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The New York Times, among other publications. She has served as managing editor of Agni and is co-editor, with Susan Aizenberg, of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women.

A native of Omaha, she has taught at Washington University, Kenyon College, Ohio University, and is presently an associate professor in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University in Tallahassee.