Frostburg State University's new Center for Creative Writing welcomes its first visiting writer for the fall semester, Gregory Djanikian, who will give a reading on Thursday, Sept. 23, 7:30 in Lane University Center room 140-141.
The author of four collections of poems and director of the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania, Djanikian was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Armenian parentage. He emigrated to the United States when he was 8 years old. His insightful work investigates intimacies and distances, quarrels and gifts, romance and illness. What is it like, Djanikian asks, to imagine vengeance against the neighborhood thug? To realize "by the time we were finished/ we didn't know/how far we had gone/ or where we had lost/ our own voices"?
Djanikian's probing and even-tempered poems navigate between largeness of feeling and compression of style. It is his "sense of precision about distances," Alec Marsh of The Boston Book Review writes, "his awareness of engaging nostalgia, his willingness to step beyond cleverness, which makes his new book so valuable."
Djanikian's reading is free and open to the public. A book signing and reception, sponsored by the FSU Department of Student and Community Involvement, will follow. For more information, call the FSU Department of English at (301) 687-4221.
FSU is committed to making all of its programs, services and activities accessible to persons with disabilities. To request accommodations through the ADA Compliance Office, call (301) 687-4102, TDD (301) 687-7955.
