Dislocate

When even the Minnesota winter stops in it's tracks, yielding a fine week of warm, sunny weather, you know something big is happening. Michael Dennis Browne, poet and teacher extraordinaire, is retiring after 38 years at the University of Minnesota. In honor of Browne's long service at the University, dislocate is hosting a reading this Wednesday, November 11th, at 7 pm in 150 Lind Hall on the University of Minnesota East Bank. Browne will read from his poetry, alongside MFA candidates Colleen McCarthy (poetry), Josh Morsell (nonfiction), and Swati Avasthi (fiction). Books will be for sale, and refreshments, (good ones, I hear) will be served.

Michael Dennis Browne was born in England, but his fascination with American poetry brought him to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. Browne attended the University of Iowa, earning an M.A. with Distinction in English in 1967. He has taught at the University of Minnesota since 1971 and is a Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of English. In addition to his numerous books of poetry, Browne is author of a children's book, Give Her the River, and several librettos.

The warm weather won't last, and Browne won't be at the University of Minnesota much longer. Celebrate them both this Wednesday--7pm, 150 Lind Hall.

Posted by Editor at 11:52 AM | Permalink

If you still haven't submitted to dislocate's Contaminated Essay Contest, here's one more reason to get your submission in: the contest will be judged by award-winning essayist and poet Lia Purpura.

Lia Purpura is the author of three collections of poems, two collections of essays and one collection of translations. On Looking (essays, Sarabande Books, 2006) was a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Towson University Prize in Literature. King Baby (poems, Alice James Books, 2008) won the Beatrice Hawley Award and was a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award and the Maine Literary Award. Increase (essays, University of Georgia Press, 2000) won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction. Stone Sky Lifting (poems, Ohio State University Press, 2000) won the OSU Press/The Journal Award. The Brighter the Veil (poems, Orchises Press, 1996) won the Towson University Prize in Literature. Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash (translations, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) was published in 1998.

Her recent essays "Glaciology" and "The Lustres" were awarded Pushcart prizes in 2007 and 2009, and other essays were named "Notable Essays" in Best American Essays, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Lia Purpura is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship (translation, Warsaw, Poland), and a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Her poems and essays appear in Agni Magazine, DoubleTake, Field, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other magazines.

A graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching/Writing Fellow in Poetry, Lia Purpura is Writer-in-Residence at Loyola University in Baltimore, MD and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA Program. Recent visiting appointments include The Bedell Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa's MFA Program in Nonfiction; Coal Royalty Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama's MFA Program; Reader/Lecturer at the Bennington Writing Program, and Visiting Writer at the Warren and Patricia Benson Forum on Creativity at Eastman Conservatory. She lives in Baltimore, MD with her husband, conductor Jed Gaylin, and their son, Joseph.

Posted by Editor at 9:14 AM | Permalink