News & Events Pulitzer Prize Winner Franz Wright to Read from His Work at Amherst College March 23

March 10, 2010                                                         

AMHERST, Mass.—The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright will read from his work at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, in Amherst College’s Alumni House. Co-sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center and the Department of European Studies, the event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2004 for his book of poems Walking to Martha’s Vineyard. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of his father James Wright, who was also awarded a Pulitzer in 1972 for his Collected Poems. The honor made the Wrights the only parent-child pair to win the coveted award in the same category.

Franz Wright’s other collections include Wheeling Motel, God’s Silence and The Beforelife (a finalist for the Pulitzer). The Boston Review has called Wright’s poems “among the most honest, haunting and human being written today,” and Denis Johnson has described them as “tiny jewels shaped by blunt, ruined fingers—miraculous gifts.” Wright currently lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.

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