The U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is proud to welcome acclaimed poet Jane Hirshfield as its 2022-23 Walton Visiting Writer in Poetry.

Hirshfield will give a free public reading of her work at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 4, at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House on the U of A campus, followed by a Q&A and book signing.  

Masks are encouraged at this event, and parking is available at Alumni House.

Hirshfield, in poems described by The Washington Post as belonging "among the modern masters" and by The New York Times as "passionate and radiant," addresses the urgent immediacies of our time.  

Hirshfield's honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets; Columbia University's Translation Center Award; The Poetry Center Book Award; and The California Book Award, among others. Her work appears in The NewYorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, Poetry and 10 editions of The Best American Poetry. 

Her nine poetry books include Ledger, The Beauty, long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award; Given Sugar, Given Salt, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award; and After, short-listed for England's T.S. Eliot Award. The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf) will be released in September 2023.  

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 M.F.A. program.

Past Walton Visiting Writers include Robin Becker, Idra Novey, Kate Briggs, Brandon Hobson, Rachel Mennies, Patrick Cottrell and Sarah Gerard.

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, the Walton Family Foundation and the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professorship in Creative Writing.