Newsroom

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Poet and essayist Ross Gay will read at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 10, in the Valley Library Rotunda on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. A question-and-answer session and book signing will follow.

The event is free and open to the public. The Valley Library is located at 201 S.W. Waldo Place, Corvallis. 

Gay is the author of "Against Which" and "Bringing the Shovel Down." His 2015 poetry collection, "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude," won the Kingsley Tufts Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and the Ohioana Book Award and was nominated for the NAACP Image Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

He is also the co-author of the chapbooks, or small collections of poetry, "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens" with Aimee Nezhukumatathil and "River" with Richard Wehrenberg, Jr. Gay has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the Guggenheim Foundation. 

Gay holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a doctorate in English from Temple University. He teaches at Indiana University. He is a founding editor of the online sports magazine "Some Call it Ballin' " and an editor of the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. He is also a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice project.

This reading is part of the 2016-17 Creative Writing Program's Visiting Writers Series, which brings nationally acclaimed writers to Oregon State University. This series is sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at OSU, with support from the OSU Libraries and 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.