CORVALLIS, Ore. - Poets Charles Goodrich and Mary Szybist will read from their most recent poetry collections at Oregon State University on Friday, Nov. 8, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Valley Library rotunda.

A question and answer session and book signing will follow. This is the first reading of the 2013-2014 Literary Northwest Series.

Goodrich is the author of three volumes of poems, "A Scripture of Crows" (2013), "Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden" (2010), and "Insects of South Corvallis" (2003), and a collection of essays, "The Practice of Home" (2004). Goodrich is director for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word at OSU. 

Joseph Bednarik of The Oregonian wrote, "What is so utterly gorgeous about 'Going to Seed' is that Goodrich utilizes the obvious metaphors of a garden - growth, decay, work, interdependence, cycles - and ushers them into eye-opening, heart-expanding, humorous and heady territory."

Szybist is a 2013 National Book Award Finalist and the author of "Granted" (2003), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and "Incarnadine" (2013). Szybist teaches at Lewis & Clark College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Craig Morgan Teicher of NPR says, "Szybist is a humble and compassionate observer of the complicated glory of the world and humanity's ambivalent role in it, as inheritors and interlopers."

Each year the Literary Northwest Series brings Pacific Northwest writers to OSU. This program is made possible by support from The Valley Library, OSU Press, the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film, the College of Liberal Arts, Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele, and Grass Roots Books and Music.

Source: 

Rachel Ratner, 516-652-5817

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