October 11, 2005
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—In her new book of poems, Skeptic Traveler (David Robert Books, Cincinnati, 2005, 96 pp.), Susan Snively, the director of the Writing Center at Amherst College and associate dean of students, relays her travels throughout the United States and Europe in accessible and artful verse. Snively will read from her work at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 24, in the Alumni House at Amherst College. This reading is free and open to the public.

William Pritchard writes, “Skeptic Traveler is a collection graced by intelligence, wit, and also by a feeling heart. Susan Snively's skepticism, whether exercised in traveling to other countries, to her familial past, or to the nooks and crannies of a complicated present, is a humane one…. ” Richard Wilbur describes Snively as “clean-cut, fluent, witty, direct, full of personality and surprise. [She] can also be deeply meditative, grave and affecting, uproarious.”

Snively is a graduate of Smith College and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Boston University. She has been writing and teaching at Amherst College since 1981. In addition to her newest release, Snively has published several books of poetry, including From This Distance (1981), Voices in the House (1988) and The Undertow (1998).

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