October 29, 2000 Author Jeffery Paine to Speak at the Library of Congress Nov. 2

On Thursday evening, November 2, Jeffery Paine, editor of The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (HarperCollins, 2000), will discuss and read from the book at the Library of Congress. The program, presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, will be at 6:45 p.m. in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building. Tickets are not required.

Jeffery Paine is contributing editor, and was for many years literary editor, of The Wilson Quarterly. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and many literary journals. He has taught at Princeton University, the New School for Social Research, and the Volksuniversiteit Amsterdam. He lives in Washington, D.C. Mr. Paine is also the author of Father India: How Encounters with an Ancient Culture Transformed the Modern West (1998).

The poetry and literature reading series at the Library of Congress is the oldest in the Washington area, and one of the oldest in the United States. This annual series of public poetry and fiction readings, lectures, symposia, and occasional dramatic performances began in the 1940s and has been almost exclusively supported since 1951 by a gift from the late Gertrude Clarke Whittall, who wanted to bring the enjoyment and appreciation of good literature to a larger audience. The Poetry and Literature Center, which administers the series, is also the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed since 1936, when the late philanthropist Archer M. Huntington endowed the Chair of Poetry at the Library of Congress. Since then, many of the nation's most eminent poets have served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the passage of Public Law 99-194 in 1985, as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The Poet Laureate suggests authors to read in the literary series, plans other special literary events during the reading season, and often introduces the programs.