September 8, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- Poet Elizabeth Alexander will read from her work at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 16, at Amherst Books at 8 Main Street. The event, sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Arnold Rampersand has called Elizabeth Alexander "one of the brightest stars in our literary sky, a poet of poise and power." Alexander is the author of three collections of poetry, including her most recent, Antebellum Dream Book, and a book of essays about race, art and culture, The Black Interior, in which she studies "black life and creativity behind the face of stereotype and limited imagination." Alexander's poems and essays have been widely anthologized and published in such places as the Paris Review and The Village Voice, and she has lectured across the country on African American art and culture and abroad for nearly two decades. She currently teaches in the English and African-American Studies Department at Yale University.

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center puts on a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. More information is available at the center's Website www.amherst.edu/~cwc.

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