FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Award-winning poet Gerald Stern will present a reading at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 16, in Giffels Auditorium on the University of Arkansas campus. The event is part of the creative writing program’s Spring Reading Series, sponsored by the Walton Foundation and the UA department of English.

Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh in 1925. His books of poetry include "Last Blue: Poems" (W.W. Norton & Company, 2000); "This Time: New and Selected Poems" (1998), which won the National Book Award; "Odd Mercy" (1995); "Bread Without Sugar" (1992), winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; "Leaving Another Kingdom: Selected Poems" (1990); "Two Long Poems" (1990); "Lovesick" (1987); "Paradise Poems" (1984); "The Red Coal" (1981), which received the Melville Caine Award from the Poetry Society of America; "Lucky Life," the 1977 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; and "Rejoicings" (1973).

Stern’s honors include the Paris Review's Bernard F. Conners Award, the Bess Hokin Award from Poetry, the Ruth Lilly Prize, four National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

The poet has taught at many universities, including Columbia University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Pittsburgh. For many years he was a teacher at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

In addition to his reading, Stern will meet individually with current students studying poetry writing at the U of A. Stern's reading is free and open to the public.