October 2, 2016 Library to Host Poet and National Book Award Finalist Monica Youn at Poetry and Law Event Oct. 20

The Law Library of Congress and the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center will host poet and National Book Award finalist Monica Youn for an event exploring the impact of the law and her legal career on her creative work.

Youn will read from her new book, “Blackacre” (Graywolf Press, 2016), which has been longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry, and participate in a discussion with Martha Dragich, professor emerita of law at the University of Missouri School of Law.

The discussion will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20, in the Mumford Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.

As Youn wrote for the Poetry Foundation, “‘Blackacre’ is a legal fiction, an imaginary landscape. Just as we use ‘John Doe’ for a hypothetical person, lawyers use ‘Blackacre’ as a placeholder term for a hypothetical plot of land. . . . [my poetry collection] also contains poems titled Whiteacre, Greenacre, etc. I think of each “____acre” as a landscape, a legacy—the allotment each of us is given to work with, whether that allotment is a place, a span of time, a work of art, a body, a destiny.”

Youn is also the author of “Ignatz” (Four Way Books, 2010), which was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry, and “Barter” (Graywolf Press, 2003). Youn received an A.B. degree from Princeton University and an M.A degree in English literature from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She attended Yale Law School and practiced law for over a decade, litigating cases in the Supreme Court, testifying before Congress on multiple occasions and providing political commentary for PBS, MSNBC, Slate and The New York Times. She has been awarded the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and the Witter Bynner Fellowship of the Library of Congress, as well as residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Yaddo, MacDowell and the Rockefeller Foundation–Bellagio. She currently teaches at Princeton University and in the Sarah Lawrence and Warren Wilson Master of Fine Arts programs.

Dragich has been a member of the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Law since 1993. She has taught a wide variety of courses, most recently Conflict of Laws, Federal Courts, Food Law and Policy, and Law and Literature. She led the development of the Law School’s One Read program in 2015. Dragich holds B.A., M.A., and J.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota and an LL.M. in agricultural and food law from the University of Arkansas. Earlier in her career, Dragich served as a law librarian at the University of Houston, Georgia State University, George Washington University and the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. She grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Law Library of Congress was founded in 1832 with the mission to make its resources available to members of Congress, the Supreme Court, other branches of the U.S. government and the global legal community, and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of law for future generations. With more than 2.9 million volumes, the Law Library contains the world’s largest collection of law books and other resources from all countries and provides online databases and guides to legal information worldwide through its website at loc.gov/law/.

The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress fosters and enhances the public's appreciation of literature. The center administers the endowed poetry chair (the U.S. Poet Laureate) and coordinates an annual literary season of poetry, fiction and drama readings, performances, lectures and symposia, sponsored by the Library's Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and the Huntington Fund. For more information, visit loc.gov/poetry/.

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