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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Acclaimed poet and prose writer Mary Ruefle will give a reading of her work at the University of North Carolina Wilmington at 7 p.m., Feb. 15, in Kenan Hall, Room 1111. Ruefle is the spring 2012 distinguished visiting writer-in-residence for poetry in the Department of Creative Writing MFA program. Her most recent poetry collection, Selected Poems, won the William Carlos Williams Award. Ruefle's collection of lectures, Madness, Rack and Honey, is forthcoming in the fall.

Ruefle is the author of 11 books of poetry, including Selected Poems (Wave Books 2010) and A Little White Shadow (Wave 2006), an art book of erasure poetry. She has also written a book of fiction, The Most of It (Wave 2008) and the comic book Go Home and Go to Bed (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics 2007). Ruefle's many awards and accolades include: a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Poet Tony Hoagland said of Ruefle's poetry, "Her work combines the spiritual desperation of Dickinson with the rhetorical virtuosity of Wallace Stevens. The result (for those with ears to hear) is a poetry at once ornate and intense; linguistically marvelous, yes, but also as visceral as anything you are likely to encounter."

Ruefle earned a B.A. in Literature from Bennington College and has taught at Vermont College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

All events are free and open to the public. Receptions sponsored by the department and book signings sponsored by Pomegranate Books will follow readings. 

For further information on UNCW's programs and events in creative writing, please contact the Department of Creative Writing at 910.962.7063.