Poems

June 16, 2011 Linda Parsons Marion is an editor at the University of Tennessee and the author of three poetry collections: Home Fires, Mother Land, and Bound. Marion’s work has appeared in journals such as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and Connecticut Review, as well as in many anthologies. She lives in Knoxville with her husband, poet Jeff Daniel Marion. Linda Parsons Marion will read from Bound at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 19 at 3 p.m.

May 27, 2011 Evie Shockley is the author of the new black (Wesleyan, 2011), a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), and two chapbooks; she also co-edits jubilat. Schockley’s poetry and literary criticism have appeared in such journals and anthologies as Callaloo, The Southern Review, Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, Harvard Review, Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Born and raised in Nashville, she currently teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

April 5, 2011 The Libyan-born poet Khaled Mattawa has published several collections of his own poetry, including Tocqueville (2010), Amorisco (2008), Zodiac of Echoes (2003), and Ismailia Eclipse (1995) and has translated numerous volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry, including Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems of Amjad Nasser (2009) and Miracle Maker: Selected Poems of Fadhil Al-Azzawi (2004), in addition to co-editing the anthologies Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Arab American Fiction (2004) and Post Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing (1999). Mattawa, a graduate of the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, has been awarded several Pushcart Prizes and the PEN Award for Literary Translation, in addition to a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and the Alfred Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. He is a Ford/United States Artist for 2011 and recipient of the 2010 Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize. In recent weeks, Mattawa has been a frequent commentator on the current situation in Libya.

March 23, 2011 Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and edits the literary journal Poems & Plays. His most recent books are a collection of poetry, Give Over, Graymalkin (2011), and the comic novella, Octavius the 1st (2008), both from Red Hen Press. He has published more than 800 poems in journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Brewer has taught in the Czech Republic, England, Kenya, and Russia. In June 2011 he will be in residence at the Arteles Creative Center in Finland. He is a native of Louisville and earned a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. In 2009, he was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

February 28, 2011 Jessie Janeshek grew up in West Virginia and earned a B.A. from Bethany College, an M.F.A. from Emerson College, and a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Her first collection of poems, Invisible Mink was published by Iris Press in 2010. She co-edited Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers (KWG Press, 2008), a literary anthology connecting readers to the inner and outer landscapes of East Tennessee and beyond. She teaches writing at the University of Tennessee, works as a freelance editor, and promotes her belief in the power of poetry as community outreach by co-directing a variety of volunteer workshops. On February 28 at 7 p.m., she will read from Invisible Mink in the Mary Greer room of the Hodges Library at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.