WSU Visiting Writer Series will feature Kaveh Akbar, the founding editor of Divedapper, for a poetry reading and discussion, 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, at the Elson Floyd Cultural Center.
Divedapper features interviews by Akbar of major voices in contemporary poetry. Akbar’s poems appeared recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, and other publications.
His first book, “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,” was printed by Alice James Publishers. Reviewing the book, The Atlantic Magazine noted, “Akbar’s poems — which explore addiction and arrested development and the starts and stops of desire — are psychic travelogues that are tiny and expansive at once.”
Steph Burt with The Yale Review noted, “Akbar has what every poet needs: the power to make, from emotions that others have felt, memorable language that nobody has assembled before.”
Akbar also is the author of the chapbook “Portrait of the Alcoholic,” published by Sibling Rivalry Press, January 2017.
Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University and in the MFA program at Randolph College. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
The event is free and is co-sponsored by Associated Students of WSU and the Student Entertainment Board.
For more information see the Visiting Writer Series website, or contact Kim Burwick, clinical assistant professor of English, 509-335-5375, kaburwick@wsu.edu.
