January 19, 2001
AWARD-WINNING POET TO READ WORKS AT VITERBO
LA CROSSE, Wis.— Award-winning poet and scholar Claudia Keelan, whose most recent collection of poetry, Utopic, was awarded the national Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Press will be giving a poetry reading on Tuesday, Feb. 13, at 7 p.m. in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Recital Hall.
Keelan will be a visiting poet at Viterbo that day courtesy of Touchstone, Viterbo’s literary magazine. Her poetry breaks down traditional definitions of self, which work to isolate rather than create community. She has published two other prize-winning collections of poetry: Refinery won the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize in 1994, and The Secularist won in the 1997 Contemporary Poetry Series from the University of Georgia Press. In addition, her poetry has appeared in two anthologies and her criticism has appeared in the 1993 edition of Contemporary Authors.
A professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Keelan is also a visiting faculty member this year at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
A booksigning will follow the poetry reading, which is free and open to the public. Keelan’s books will be available for purchase.
For more information, call Bill Stobb, Viterbo assistant professor of English, at 796-3486 or email westobb@viterbo.edu.