FARMINGTON — The celebrated University of Maine at Farmington Visiting Writers Series will present its final guest author for the year. Award-winning poet Ross Gay will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 19, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center, 111 South St.
The reading is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a meet and greet with the author.
Gay is the author of “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award — poetry category and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. The book also is a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Books Critics Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
Gay also is the author of two previous collections, “Bringing the Shovel Down” and “Against Which.” He also is the co-author of chapbooks “Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens” with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and “River” with Richard Wehrenberg Jr.
Gay is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin’, in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press.
Gay is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.
For more information, contact Jeffrey Thomson, UMF professor of creative writing, at 778-7454 or jeffrey.thomson@maine.edu.
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