Myra Sklarew, an award-winning poet, will read from her works at the next Writers Read program 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU.
Sklarew is professor emerita of literature at American University in Washington, D.C., and former president of Yaddo, an artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
She is the author of three chapbooks and six collections of poetry, including “Lithuania: New & Selected Poems” and “The Witness Trees”; a collection of short fictions, “Like a Field Riddled by Ants”; a collection of essays, “Over the Rooftops of Time”; a nonfiction work, “Holocaust and the Construction of Memory”; and her most recent publication, “1,111 Days in my Life Plus Four.”
The Contemporary Poets’ Archives of the Library of Congress has recorded her poetry, and her poem, “Lithuania,” won the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award from the Judah Magnus Museum, cited as “a living testimonial to those who perished in the Kovno Ghetto, wholly heartfelt and viscerally honest.”
Jerry Holsopple, professor of visual and communication arts at EMU, is teaching and pursuing special projects at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania, as a Fulbright scholar for the 2009-10 academic year.
Dr. Holsopple wrote: “If I wasn’t in the middle of the dark Lithuanian winter I would be there [EMU] to hear Myra read her work. I have used her poetry during all the Lithuania cross-cultural experiences that I have led to envelop students in the emotion and experience of Paneriai (one of the early Holocaust sites). Reading her poetry has affected me and the students deeply. As I pick up a copy of her writing and read a few lines, I am moved again.”