Ithaca College

The School of Humanities and Sciences and the Department of Writing are pleased to present an evening with award-winning poet Mary Szybist. She will read from her poetry at 7:30pm on Thursday, October 8th in Klingenstein Lounge in Campus Center. The reading is free and open to the public. A question-and-answer period and book-signing will follow.

Mary Szybist is most recently the author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Her work has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes and has been supported by residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy. Her first book Granted won the 2004 GLCA New Writers Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A native of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, she now lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches at Lewis & Clark College. 

Of Incarnadine, the National Book Award Committee noted, “In her gorgeous second collection, Mary Szybist blends traditional and experimental aesthetics to recast the myth of the Biblical Mary for this era. In vulnerable lyrics, surprising concrete poems, and other forms, and with extraordinary sympathy and a light touch of humor, Szybist probes the nuances of love, loss, and the struggle for religious faith in a world that seems to argue against it. This is a religious book for nonbelievers, or a book of necessary doubts for the faithful.”

For more information about the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series or to request special accommodations, contact Eleanor Henderson at 274-3324 or ehenderson@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.