Jean Valentine to speak for Writing Program Reading Series Oct. 23

Poet Jean Valentine, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23.

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. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.

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 David Schuman at dschuman@wustl.edu.

Currently State Poet of New York, Valentine was born in Chicago and earned a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA, but has lived most of her life in New York City. In 1965 she won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker. In 2004 her collection Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965 – 2003 won a National Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent book is Little Boat (2007).

In all Valentine has authored 11 volumes. Other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Bunting Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, The New York Council for the Arts and The New York Foundation for the Arts. She also has won the Maurice English Prize, the Teasdale Poetry Prize, The Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Valentine has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, Columbia University and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, among many others.