March 18, 2001 Poets Michael Burkard and Sapphire to Read Their Poems at the Library of Congress

On Thursday evening, March 29, poets Michael Burkard and Sapphire 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 Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. Tickets are not required.

Michael Burkard's eight collections of poetry include Unsleeping (2001), Entire Dilemma (1998), and My Secret Boat (1990). He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and two grants from both the New York State Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also worked as an alcoholism counselor, particularly with children whose lives have been affected by alcoholism. He is on the faculty of Syracuse University.

Sapphire is the author of the poetry books Black Wings & Blind Angels (1999) and American Dreams (1994) and of Push: A Novel (1996), which won the 1997 First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Book-of-the-Month Club Stephen Crane Award for first fiction. She lives in New York City.