Poets Jean Valentine and Martha Collins to Give Readings as Part of UA’s 2007 Bankhead Visiting Writers Series

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Poets Jean Valentine and Martha Collins will give readings Thursday, Jan. 18 at the Bama Theatre on Greensboro Ave., at 7:30 p.m., as part of The University of Alabama Bankhead Visiting Writers Series.

Valentine won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, “Dream Barker,” in 1965. Her most recent collection, “Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965 – 2003,” was the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

Author of eight other books, Valentine received 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, as well as the Maurice English Prize, the Teasdale Poetry Prize and The Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize in 2000. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the graduate writing program of New York University, Columbia University and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

Collins is the author of the book-length poem “Blue Front.” She has published four earlier collections of poems and a recent chapbook, “Gone So Far,” and has co-translated two collections of poetry from the Vietnamese, most recently “Green Rice,” by Lam Thi My Da. Her awards include fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, as well as three Pushcart Prizes and a Lannan Foundation residency fellowship. She founded the creative writing program at University of Massachusetts -Boston, and since 1997 has taught at Oberlin College, where she is Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing.

The reading is free and open to the public.

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, contact UA’s creative writing program at 205/348-0766 or visit http://www.as.ua.edu/english/08_cw/

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the “USA Today” Academic All American Team.