The Patrick Hayes Writers Series at William and Mary — which has this year featured, among others, George Saunders, David Wojahn and Tim O’Brien — will wrap up April 11 and 12 with two alumni poets who will read from their work.
Steve Kistulentz and Rebecca Lindenberg will both read from new books of poetry at 5 p.m. April 11 in Blow Hall. Alumni student literary prizes will be awarded at 5 p.m. April 12 at Tyler Hall to wrap up the event. Both events are free and open to the public and are followed by receptions.
Kistulentz is the poet behind two collections: 2011’s “The Luckless Age” and 2012’s “Little Black DayDream.” He won the 2009 Benjamin Saltman Award — an annual award of $3,000 for a previously unpublished original collection of poetry — for “The Luckless Age.”
He currently teaches creative writing, literature and popular culture at Millsaps College in Mississippi.
Lindberg’s inaugural book of poetry, “Love, An Index,” was the first publication honored in McSweeney’s new Poetry Series in 2012. That text explores her relationship with her partner, Poet Craig Arnold, who went missing in April 2009 during a solo hike on the volcanic island of Kuchinoerabu in Japan.
In the past, she was the recipient of a MacDowell Arts Colony residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Grant and a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship. She currently teaches in the English department at Utah State University.
Other writers featured in this year’s writers series are Rosalind Brackenbury and John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Students submitted their writing in early spring for the April 12 awards. After a round of blind judging by members of the creative writing faculty, the second and final round of judging was done from writers outside the department.
