Award-winning poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf will read from her works at the fourth and final Writers Read of the year 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 18 in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU.
Kasdorf is associate professor of English and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University, where she teaches in the MFA program in creative writing.
She has published two collections of poetry with the University of Pittsburgh Press, "Eve’s Striptease" and "Sleeping Preacher," recipients of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the Great Lakes College’s Association Award for New Writing, respectively. A third collection, "Poetry in America," is currently under submission.
Her poems have been awarded a 2009 NEA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. She also published a collection of essays, "The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life," winner of the 2002 Book of the Year Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature, and a biography, "Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American." Most recently, she co-edited the restored text of Yoder’s 1940 local color classic, "Rosanna of the Amish." She is also co-editor of the anthology, "Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn," published by NYU Press.
"The first time I read Julia’s poetry, I found my voice – at 43 years old," said Violet A. Dutcher, chair of EMU’s language and literature department. "This voice began to speak, and it ‘spoke’ me through graduate school, my dissertation, my years at Kent State University, and it brought me here to EMU. I invite you to come hear Julia read from her work. Your voice will never be the same," she added.
Admission to the program, which includes dinner, is $15. Reservations are required by March 12 and can be made online at www.emu.edu/langlit/writers-read/reservations or by calling the language and literature department at 540-432-4168.