NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Acclaimed poet Mary Leader will read from her work this month at Vanderbilt University.
Leader, author of the award-winning collections Red Signature and The Penultimate Suitor, will read at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 28, in Room 101 of Buttrick Hall on the Vanderbilt campus. The reading is free and open to the public.
“Mary Leader‘s poetry is full of the joy of invention,” said Mark Jarman, professor of English. “On the American poetry scene today, she is one of a kind.”
Leader practiced law for many years and is the former assistant state attorney general of Oklahoma and also has served as referee for the Supreme Court of Oklahoma. She earned a master of fine arts from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and left her legal career to earn a Ph.D. in literature at Brandeis University.
Red Signature won the National Poetry Series in 1996. The Penultimate Suitor was awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize in 2001. Among the selections at the reading will be two linked poems from the latter book, Sequence as Opposed to Series and Series as Opposed to Sequence.
Leader, an associate professor at Purdue University, teaches writing and poetry to both undergraduates and graduate students.
Audio from the reading will be posted at VUCast (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news/), the website of Vanderbilt News Service.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu