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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Award-winning poet Sidney Wade will visit Oregon State University on Friday, Nov. 12, where she will read from her works beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Valley Library rotunda. The reading is free and open to the public, and a book signing will follow.

Wade's most recent book, "Stroke," has been described as political outrage dressed in the clothes of the pastoral and takes readers from the grasslands of the Florida panhandle all the way to the Aegean coast.

Though lyric and light-versed, it addresses the serious effects humans can have on place and one another.

Les Murray, author of "The Biplane Houses," said that "With extreme word play, Sidney Wade's 'Stroke' dazzles with the right kind of chaos, yet it stays within reach of our sympathy. It moves me and it feels true."  

Wade is the author of four previous books of poetry, including "Celestial Bodies, Green" (1998), "From Istanbul/Istanbul'dan" and "Empty Sleeves." Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The New Republic, Southern Review, and other publications. Wade received a Fulbright Fellowship and was a senior lecturer at Istanbul University from 1989-90.

Born in Englewood, N.J., in 1951, Wade is professor of creative writing at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she has lived and taught since 1993.

Wade's appearance in Corvallis is part of the OSU Department of English's 2010-11 Visiting Writers Series, and is made possible by contributions from the Valley Library, the OSU Department of English, the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts, Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele, and the OSU Bookstore.