Events & Calendars Poets of Amherst: A Conversation with Karen Skolfield

Join host J. Riley Caldwell-O'Keefe, director of Amherst College’s Center for Teaching and Learning, in conversation with Northampton's own poet laureate, Karen Skolfield.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress won the 2018 Barnard Women Poets Prize. Frost in the Low Areas won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press. The poet laureate for Northampton, Mass., for 2019–2021, Skolfield has won the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in poetry from The Missouri Review, 2015 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and 2015 Arts & Humanities Award from New England Public Radio, among other awards and fellowships. Her poems can be found in dozens of journals and magazines. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her M.F.A.

J. Riley Caldwell-O’Keefe directs Amherst College’s Center for Teaching and Learning. She was recently elected to the Core Committee of the Professional and Organizational Development Network. Previously, Caldwell-O’Keefe was a faculty member in the Boise State University theater department and associate director of the general education program. She served 10 years in the U.S. Air Force and traveled the world as stage manager for Air Force Entertainment’s Tops in Blue, then drew on this experience for her master’s and doctoral work, which she completed at UC Santa Barbara with a feminist studies emphasis. Her current research focuses on implicit bias in course evaluations, students as pedagogical partners, and teaching and learning at small liberal arts colleges.