The Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Department of English at the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences will host scholar and author Clare Cavanagh as its 2016-17 Walton Visiting Writer in Translation. Cavanagh will give a free public reading of her work at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in the Human Environmental Sciences auditorium on the U of A campus.

Cavanagh is an acclaimed American literary critic and translator. Her essays and translations have appeared in TLS, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum and Poetry, among many other journals. She has translated and edited numerous volumes of poetry from literary luminaries such as Wislawa Szymborska and Adam Zagajewski. She won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism for Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West. 

Among her many honors are the William Riley Parker Prize of the Modern Language Association; the AATSEEL Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book in Slavic Literature; the John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation; and the PEN/Book-of-the Month Club Prize for Outstanding Literary Translation. 

Each year, the Walton Visiting Writers series in the Program in Creative Writing and Translation brings esteemed authors in poetry, fiction and literary translation to the U of A to give free public readings and to work with graduate students in the creative writing MFA program. Past Walton Writers include Natalie Diaz, Chris Abani, Caryl Phillips, Franz Wright, Marian Schwartz and Karen Tei Yamashita.

This event is made possible by the Program in Creative Writing and Translation, the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English and the Walton Family Foundation.