April 2, 1998 Authors Grace Paley and Anne Winters to Read at Library of Congress

Grace Paley and Anne Winters will read from their work at 6:45 p.m. April 30 in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry Robert Pinsky will introduce the authors. The reading is free. Presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, tickets are not required.

Grace Paley, author of fiction and poetry, has taught at Columbia University and Syracuse University, Sarah Lawrence College and the City College of New York. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a National Council on the Arts grant, a Guggenheim fellowship in fiction and a National Institute of Arts and Letters award for short story writing, she also was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her works include The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1975), Later the Same Day (1985), Leaning Forward: Poems (1985) and Just as I Thought (1998).

Anne Winters is the author of The Key to the City (1986), which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for poetry, and a new collection in progress, An Immigrant Woman. She is also the translator of Salamander: Selected Poems of Robert Marteau (1979), which won a translation award from Poetry magazine. Now on the faculty of the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, she teaches in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. program in Swannanoa, North Carolina.

The Poetry and Literature Center, which administers the poetry 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. Archibald MacLeish, who was Librarian from 1939 to 1944, determined the Consultant in Poetry should be an annual appointment. 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.

Mr. Pinsky, award-winning translator of The Inferno of Dante and a creative writing professor at Boston University, suggests authors to read in the literary series, plans other special events during the literary season, and usually introduces the programs.

Interpreting services (American Sign Language, Contact Signing, Oral and/or Tactile) will be provided if requested five business days in advance of the event. Call (202) 707- 6362 TTY and voice to make a specific request. For other ADA accommodations, contact the Disability Employment office at (202) 707-9948 TTY and (202) 707-7544 voice.