March 8, 2001 Poets Dorianne Laux and Gregory Orr to Read Their Poems at the Library of Congress

Press Contact: Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189
Public Contact: Jennifer Rutland (202) 707-5395

On Thursday evening, March 15, poets Dorianne Laux and Gregory Orr will read their poems 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, 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Tickets are not required.

Dorianne Laux, who teaches in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon, is the author of three collections of poetry: Smoke (2000), What We Carry (1994), and Awake (1990), all published by BOA Editions; and a textbook, The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, which she wrote with Kim Addonizio (1997). She has participated as a teacher in many community writing programs across the country, as well as at writing festivals and conferences. Her many awards and honors include the Pushcart Prize (1999 and 2000), a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1990), a Bread Loaf fellowship as the Margaret Bridgeman Fellow in Poetry (1990), and the 1988 Isabella Gardner Fellowship for Outstanding Young Woman Poet from the MacDowell Colony.

Gregory Orr has been on the faculty of the University of Virginia since 1975. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Orpheus and Eurydice: A Lyric Sequence (2000), and City of Salt (1995). His 1973 debut collection, Burning the Empty Nests, was reissued in 1996. A new collection, The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2003. He is also the author of four works of criticism, including Poets Teaching Poets (1996), which he co-edited with Ellen Bryant Voigt. He is the recipient of a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Institute for Culture and Violence (2000), and the Virginia Prize for Poetry (1984), and his fellowships include those from the National Endowment for the Arts (1978-79 and 1989-90) and from the Guggenheim Foundation (1977-78).

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PR 01-037
2001-03-09
ISSN 0731-3527