Beall Poetry Festival Features Award-Winning Poets

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Contact: Terry Goodrich, (254) 710-3321
WACO, Texas (April 4, 2016) – The 22nd annual Beall Poetry Festival, a celebration of contemporary poetry featuring three poets, will be Wednesday, April 6, to Friday, April 8.
Featured poets are Amaranth Borsuk, Nicole Cooley and Kevin Young.
A writer will perform a poetry reading at 7 p.m. every day of the festival, with Borsuk reading on Wednesday, April 6. Cooley will read on Thursday, April 7, and Young will read on Friday, April 8. All evening poetry readings will be in Bennett Auditorium.
The student literary awards will be 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, in Room 101 of the Carroll Science Building, and will honor the students who submitted outstanding poetry or works of fiction.
At 3:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7, Ernest Suarez, poetry critic, will deliver the Virginia Beall Ball Lecture on contemporary poetry in Room 101 of Carroll Science Building.
The last afternoon event will be a panel discussion with Borsuk, Cooley, Young and Suarez at 3:30 Friday, April 8, in Room 101 of Carroll Science Building.
Borsuk earned a B.A. in English from University of California, Los Angeles, then studied at University of Southern California, earning an M.A. in English literature and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing. She is an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she also teaches in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Poetics program. Her most recent work is "Pomegranate-Eater," a collection of poems.
Cooley received a B.A. from Brown University, earned an M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and got her Ph.D. in American literature and women’s studies from Emory University. She is a professor of English at Queens College-CUNY, where she serves as director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation. Cooley’s most recent book is "Breach," a collection of poems about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast.
Young studied at Harvard University, was awarded a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and later earned an M.F.A. from Brown University. He serves as Charles Howard Chandler Professor of Creative Writing and English and as curator of literary collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library for the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Books Library at Emory University. Young's most recent work is "Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems 1995-2015."
The festival also features Ernest Suarez as critic. Suarez graduated with a B.A. in psychology from Eckerd College, earned an M.A. in English from the University of South Florida and got his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He serves as professor of English at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and on the editorial boards of "The Texas Review," "The James Dickey Newsletter" and "ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa," as well as serving on the advisory board of the Robert Penn Warren Circle. He is vice president of the Association of Literary, Scholars, Critics, and Writers.
Baylor University's 22nd annual Beall Poetry Festival is supported by the John A. and DeLouise McClelland Beall Endowed Fund, established in 1994 by Mrs. Virginia B. Ball to honor her parents and encourage the writing and appreciation of poetry.
All events are free and open to the public. Bennett Auditorium is located in Draper Academic Building at 1420 S. Seventh St. Carroll Science Building is located at 1401 S. Fifth St.
by Jenna Press, student newswriter, (254) 710-6805
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