AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR MAXINE KUMIN TO READ AT U OF A

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The University of Arkansas graduate programs in creative writing and the department of English present Maxine Kumin. The author will read selections from her poetry on Wednesday March 7 at 8 p.m. in Giffels Auditorium, Old Main.

"Maxine Kumin has had a sustained and distinguished career. She’s been writing for 50 years, and she’s still at the top of her form," said Enid Shomer, associate professor in the UA creative writing program. "She creates vivid, wonderful images. She writes well about the natural world and relationships between people. I think the audience will really enjoy this reading."

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Up Country, Maxine Kumin's fifteen additional awards, grants and fellowships include the 1996 Centennial Award, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the 1998 New Hampshire Writers Project Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1999, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Maxine Kumin is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including Selected Poems 1960 - 1990 (Norton, 1997) and Connecting the Dots (Norton 1996). The collection Looking for Luck (Norton 1992) won the Poets' prize in 1997 as well as the Aiken Taylor Poetry Prize in 1995.

Of her five collections of essays, the recently released titles are Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry (Copper Canyon Press 2000) and Inside the Halo and the Journey Beyond (Norton 1999). In addition to her collection of short stories, she is the author of five novels and has written numerous children's books.

Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress from 1981 to 1982, Kumin also served as the Poet Laureate for the State of New Hampshire 1989-94. The poet began teaching in 1969 at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Since then, she has taught as a professor at over a dozen institutions including Princeton, Brandeis, Bucknell and MIT. She currently teaches at Florida International University.

A graduate of Radcliffe College, Kumin holds honorary Doctors of Humanities letters from Centre College, Davis and Elkins College, Regis College, New England College, Claremont Graduate school, University of New Hampshire and Keene State College.

Her latest collection of poetry, The Long Marriage, (Norton 2001) will be released in November.