Robert Pinsky to Speak Tonight in Chicago

A reprint of a press release of interest.

Art Beyond Borders: Robert Pinsky
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 6 PM

Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Free admission

While serving as U.S. Poet Laureate for an unprecedented three terms from 1997 to 2000, Robert Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, which gave a resonant voice to America’s vigorous and varied poetry audience. Pinsky has been active as a critic, poet, translator of verse, and recently authored a prose book, The Life of David (2005). His newest book—his seventh—is Gulf Music (2007), winner of the 2008 Theodore Roethke Prize. Pinsky is a professor at Boston University and the poetry editor for the online magazine, Slate. He has also written the “Poet’s Choice” column for the Washington Post, and has been a regular commentator on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 2003, he made a cameo appearance on the popular television show The Simpsons.

Co-sponsored by Poetry Foundation and Art Institute of Chicago

360 DEGREES: ART BEYOND BORDERS
brings together Chicago’s leading cultural institutions—Poetry Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Chicago Council on Global Affairs—to celebrate cultural, social, and political life around the world. Leading museum directors, renowned musicians, poets from around the world, and cultural leaders explore the role of art and culture in our ever-shrinking globe.

www.poetryfoundation.org

2009 Conference Featured Speaker to Speak in Texas on March 12

An event of note.

As a preview for the Fifteenth Annual ALSC Conference, to be held in October 2009 in Denver, Colorado, we are pleased to note that our featured speaker Azar Nafisi will be speaking at the Harry Ransom Lecture on March 12th of this year.  The Harry Ransom Lectures are held in Austin at the University of Texas and sponsored by the University Co-operative Society, in memory of former Chancellor Harry Huntt Ransom. Azar Nafisi has taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai, and is currently a Visiting Professor and the director of the Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.  Ms. Nafisi is the celebrated author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003); another work, Things I Have Been Silent About, appears this month in print.  While teaching in Tehran, she endured dismissal and a six-year teaching hiatus for refusing to wear a veil in the classroom, and her work concerns both criticism of the Islamic regime and self-criticism in the vein of Pride and Prejudice.  She has been greatly distinguished for her studies and promotion of culture and human rights, especially in the Middle East, most recently in 2006 by the Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature, presented by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media.  We celebrate her acclaim in Texas as we anticipate her weekend with us this fall.

– Erin McDonagh

David Ferry will read at Boston University

We are pleased to announce that David Ferry, poet, translator, and lifetime member of the ALSC, will read at Boston University’s Katzenberg Center (871 Commonwealth Ave, 3rd floor) on Thursday, September 25 at 5PM. He will be reading from his new translation of the first three books of Virgil’s Aeneid, among other works.

Ferry is the author of Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations, which won the 2000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, as well as numerous volumes of translation.

The reading is free and open to the public.  It is part of the fall 2008 Poetry Reading Series at Boston University, co-sponsored by the Boston University Humanities Foundation and the University Professors Program.

A recent recording of Ferry reading from his work is available as part of the ALSC podcast series.

– Liza Katz