Poetry on Tap for ‘First Wednesdays’ Oct. 3

SUZANNE RAMSEY
College relations staff writer

John Casteen Jennifer Chang

Poets John Casteen and Jennifer Chang will read from their forthcoming books at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3, in the Wailes Lounge at the Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center.

The event is part of “First Wednesdays,” a series of public readings sponsored by the College’s creative writing program. Admission is free.

Casteen, who teaches poetry at Sweet Briar, will read from “Free Union,” a book to be released in 2009. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah and other publications.

Casteen’s non-fiction work has been published in Slate, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Chang’s first collection of poems, “The History of Anonymity,” will be released in 2008. Her poems appear, or are forthcoming, in the Boston Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, the New Republic, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, and Best New Poets 2005.

She has received fellowships and scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia.

For more information on First Wednesdays, contact Carrie Brown, associate professor of English and creative writing, at cbrown@sbc.edu or Ext. 6287.