UA’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series Welcomes Ralph Angel and Bei Dao

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama’s Bankhead Visiting Writers Series will host poets Ralph Angel and Bei Dao on Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall. The event is free and open to the public. In addition to the Oct. 2 reading, both Dao and Angel will lead an informal question and answer session in 301 Morgan Hall at noon on Friday, Oct. 3.

Angel has published three volumes of poetry: “Neither World,” “Anxious Latitudes,” which won the 1995 James Laughlin Award, and “Twice Removed” (Sarabande Books, 2001). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Antioch Review and The American Poetry Review. They also have been anthologized in “The Best American Poetry,” “New American Poets of the 90s” and “Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature.”

Angel’s most recent honors include a Pushcart Prize and awards from the Fulbright Foundation and Poetry magazine. He teaches in the writing program at the University of Redlands in California where he is the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of English.

Dao, considered the most influential of the Chinese “Misty Poets,” has published five volumes of poetry in English – “Unlock,” “Landscape Over Zero,” “Forms of Distance,” “Old Snow” and “The August Sleepwalker” – as well as a collection of short stories, “Waves and a collection of essays,” Blue Horse.

His work has been translated into more than 25 languages. In 1978 he founded the underground literary journal, Jingtian (Today), the first non-Government sponsored and pro-democracy journal in China since 1949.

Dao has lived in exile since the 1989 revolt in Tiananmen Square. Today, he is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, and the Meckey Poet in Residence at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series is made possible by an endowment from the Bankhead Foundation, The University of Alabama’s Program in Creative Writing, the department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information, please contact UA’s creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.