Monday, April 06, 2009

Lavonne J. Adams, lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, will read at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, in Kenan Lecture Hall (Kenan 1111) on the UNC Wilmington campus. Adams is the winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize for her first book-length collection, Through the Glorieta Pass, which was published by Pearl Books in 2009.

The collection takes its origin from a chance occurrence in the heart of Santa Fe in the summer of 1993. On one of her walks through the town, Adams encountered a plaque that said the spot on which she was standing was the end of the Santa Fe Trail. Having just completed a prize-winning chapbook on the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelee (In the Shadow of the Mountain, North Carolina Writers' Network, 2004), Adams had been waiting for a new subject to inspire her. After returning home to Wilmington, she discovered a collection of journal entries written by women traveling the trail in the mid-1800s.

"I was fascinated," she said. "I couldn't stop imagining what their experiences would have been, how they would have felt about their journeys." Poems in the book represent both white and Native American perspectives.

In addition to In the Shadow of the Mountain, which won the Randall Jarrell Prize, Adams is the author of the chapbook Everyday Still Life. She teaches and coordinates the bachelor of fine arts program for the Department of Creative Writing.

The creative writing department celebrates Adams' accomplishment and invites the public to attend this free event. A reception will follow, along with a book signing sponsored by Pomegranate Books.

Recent praise for Through the Glorieta Pass:

"Through the Glorieta Pass is like no other collection I've read before. Conceptually, the book is a union of voices: Adams' straightforward and lyrical one, and the voices of women who braved the journey across the Santa Fe Trail."

~ David Hernandez, 2007 Pearl Poetry Prize Judge

"With authority and integrity, Adams has brought both the beauty and the danger along the Santa Fe Trail to life in her poems. On this journey westward, transformation was inevitable. The ways of the Apaches and the Mexicans mingled with the lives of the settlers. Out of that medicine bag of history has come poetry that speaks to the heart."

~ Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina Poet Laureate

For further information on programs and events, contact the Department of Creative Writing at 910.962.7063 or visit www.uncw.edu/writers.