Poet Kerri Webster to read April 15

Poet Kerri Webster, who is completing a three-year appointment as visiting writer-in-residence in The Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15.

The talk — which is sponsored by The Writing Program Reading Series — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. A reception and booksigning immediately will follow.

Duncker Hall is located at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle. For more information, call (314) 935-7130 or e-mail David Schuman at dschuman@wustl.edu.

A native of Idaho, Webster earned an MFA from Indiana University, where she was a Lilly Fellow.

In 2003, her chapbook Rowing Through Fog was selected by Carl Phillips, professor of English and of African and African-American Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, as a winner of the Poetry Society of America’s National Chapbook Competition. Her first book, We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone, was published by the University of Georgia in 2005.

“Webster’s poems announce an authentically original voice of astonishing intellectual and formal range, refreshing and disarming in its frankness,” Phillips wrote of her first book. “The vision here is fierce, intimate, and tireless in its determination to see this life squarely.”

Webster also is author of a second chapbook, Psalm Project, forthcoming from Albion Books. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including Amerian Poetry, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Pleiades and VOLT.