UMF Visiting Writers Series opens year with reading by award-winning poet and author Camille Dungy, Sept. 19

FARMINGTON, ME  (September 10, 2019)—The University of Maine at Farmington’s celebrated Visiting Writers Series opens the new academic year with a reading by poet and author Camille T. Dungy. Dungy will read from her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 19, in The Landing in the Olsen Student Center. Sponsored by the UMF Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, the series events are free and open to the public.

Camille T. Dungy’s debut collection of personal essays is “Guidebook to Relative Strangers” (W. W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of four collections of poetry, most recently “Trophic Cascade” (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.

Camille T. Dungy
Camille T. Dungy

Dungy’s other poetry collections are “Smith Blue” (Southern Illinois UP, 2011), finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award, “Suck on the Marrow” (Red Hen Press, 2010), winner of the American Book Award, and “What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison” (Red Hen Press, 2006), finalist for PEN the Center USA Literary Award for Poetry.

Her poems and essays have appeared in “Best American Poetry,” “Best American Travel Writing,” “100 Best African American Poems,” nearly 30 other anthologies, plus dozens of print and online venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, VQR, Guernica, and Poets.org.

Other honors include two Northern California Book Awards, a California Book Award silver medal, two NAACP Image Award nominations, two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations, fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and fellowships from the NEA in both poetry and prose.

Dungy is currently a Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University.

More Information on the UMF Creative Writing Program

As the only Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in the state of Maine and one of only three in all of New England, the UMF program invites students to work with faculty, who are practicing writers, in workshop-style classes to discover and develop their writing strengths in the genres of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Small classes, an emphasis on individual conferencing, and the development of a writing portfolio allow students to see themselves as artists and refine their writing under the guidance of accomplished and published faculty mentors. Students can pursue internships to gain real-world writing and publishing experience by working on campus with The Beloit Poetry Journal, a distinguished poetry publication since 1950; or Alice James Books, an award-winning poetry publishing house.

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Media Contact: Jeffrey Thomson, UMF professor of creative writing, at 207-778-7454, or jeffrey.thomson@maine.edu.

April Mulherin
UMF Associate Director for Media Relations
office: 207-778-7081
cell: 207-491-0064
april.mulherin@maine.edu

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