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Poet and essayist Lia Purpura next in Frostic Series

Oct. 1, 2007

KALAMAZOO--Poet and essayist Lia Purpura will read from her work as part of the Gwen Frostic Reading Series at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, in the Little Theatre at Western Michigan University. All readings in the series are open to the public free of charge.

A 2004 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose, Purpura was originally scheduled to visit WMU as part of the Frostic Series in March.

Purpura's collection of essays, "Increase," won the Associated Writing Programs Award in creative nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2000. Her collection of poems, "Stone Sky Lifting," won the Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award and also was published in 2000. Her manuscript, "King Baby," recently won the 2007 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books. She is also the author of "The Brighter the Veil," winner of the Towson University Prize in Literature, and "Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash," translated while she was on a Fulbright Scholarship in Poland.

Purpura is writer-in-residence at Loyola College in Baltimore and teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency Master of Fine Arts program in Tacoma, Wash.

Fall 2007 Frostic Reading Series

Monday, Sept. 17, poet William Olsen
Monday, Oct. 1, playwright Rich Orloff
Wednesday, Oct. 10, poet and essayist Lia Purpura
Monday, Oct. 29, novelist Robin Hemley
Wednesday, Nov. 7, poet and essayist Marvin Bell
Wednesday, Nov. 14, novelist Victor LaValle

All readings are at 8 p.m. in the Little Theatre, which is located at the corner of Oakland Drive and Oliver Street on Western Michigan University's East Campus. There is free off-street parking behind the theatre.

For more information about the Gwen Frostic Reading Series, contact Elizabeth Marzoni at elizabeth.s.marzoni@wmich.edu. To be added to the mailing list for reading series announcements, write to Becky Beech at rebecca.beech@wmich.edu and include your complete name and postal address.

Media contact: Thom Myers, (269) 387-8400, thom.myers@wmich.edu

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