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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Poet and nonfiction writer Ellen Bass will read at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 7, in the Valley Library Rotunda on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. A question-and-answer session and book signing will follow.

Bass is the author of the poetry collection "Like a Beggar," published in 2014 by Copper Canyon Press. Her previous books of poetry include "The Human Line," which was named a notable book by The San Francisco Chronicle, and "Mules of Love," which won the Lambda Literary Award in poetry.

She also co-edited, with Florence Howe, "No More Masks!: An Anthology of Poems by Women." Bass' poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and The Sun.

Her nonfiction books include "Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth," "I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse," and "The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse," which has sold over one million copies and has been translated into 10 languages. 

Bass' honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the California Arts Council, two Pushcart Prizes, the Elliston Book Award for poetry (awarded by the University of Cincinnati), the Nimrod/Hardman's Pablo Neruda Prize and The Missouri Review's Larry Levis Award. She currently teaches in the low residency MFA program at Pacific University.

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.

Prior to her visit to OSU, Ellen Bass will be writer-in-residence for the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest hosted by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. The Spring Creek Project is also a co-sponsor for the reading.

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