Friends of the Library to host reading by Gray Jacobik, winner of the 2016 William Meredith Award for poetry
The recipient of the 2016 William Meredith Award for poetry, Gray Jacobik, will read from her new and selected poetry collection, The Banquet, on Friday, April 22, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. in the Charles Chu Room in Charles E. Shain Library. The reading is free and open to the public.
Hosted by the Friends of the Connecticut College Library, Jacobik will be introduced by Richard Harteis, with comments by newly-appointed Connecticut state poet laureate Rennie McQuilkin.
The Banquet is scheduled for publication during National Poetry Month in April, 2016, by Poets’ Choice.
The William Meredith Award for poetry is named for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning professor of English at Connecticut College. Connecticut College holds William Meredith’s personal papers in the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives. The William Meredith Papers at Connecticut College consist of letters, drafts, and speeches, together with papers relating to many organizations with which Meredith was associated.
About Gray Jacobik
Gray Jacobik, a professor emerita of Eastern Connecticut State University, is a poet, mentor, and painter who lives in Deep River, Connecticut. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Now, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Poets Guide to the Birds, and Poetry from Paradise Valley. Among other honors, she has received The Yeats Prize, The Emily Dickinson Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and served as the Frost Place Poet-in-Residence. Her poem, “The Skeptic’s Prayer,” received the 2009 Third Coast Poetry Prize (Western Michigan University), and in 2010 “Paris, 1970” was a finalist in Narrative Magazine’s Second Annual Poetry Contest. Her book, The Double Task, received The Juniper Prize and was nominated for The James Laughlin Award and The Poet’s Prize. The Surface of Last Scattering was selected by X. J. Kennedy as the winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Brave Disguises received the AWP Poetry Series Award. Her most recent book, Little Boy Blue: A Memoir in Verse, is published by CavanKerry Press.
Gray Jacobik has a personal website at http://grayjacobik.com. Her blog, Come A Little Bit Closer Now Baby, is dedicated to the art of close reading and appears on the Michigan Quarterly Review’s website.
About Friends of the Connecticut College Library
Founded in 1945, the Friends of the Connecticut College Library is an informal organization of individuals who share an interest in the programs and well-being of the Library. Their generosity enables programs that enhance the intellectual and cultural life of Connecticut College and the region, including lectures, scholarships, exhibitions, and the purchase and preservation of rare materials. Join the Friends.
April 15, 2016