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 Stephanie Watts, assistant professor of English and director of creative writing, department of English  Bob Watts, professor of practice, department of English |
Professor in the department of English and comparative literature at Columbia University
Web Site: http://www.blueflowerarts.com/
mstrand.html
Title of Presentation: Poems and Where They Come From - A Combination Reading and Talk
Mark Strand, former United States Poet Laureate, was born on Canada's Prince Edward Island in 1934, and was raised and educated in the United States and South America. He is the author of ten books of poems, including "Blizzard of One" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), which won the Pulitzer Prize; "Dark Harbor" (1993); "The Continuous Life" (1990); "Selected Poems" (1980); "The Story of Our Lives" (1973); and "Reasons for Moving"(1968).
He has also published two books of prose, several volumes of translation (of works by Rafael Alberti and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, among others), several monographs on contemporary artists and three books for children. He has edited a number of volumes, including "The Golden Ecco Anthology" (1994), "The Best American Poetry 1991," and "Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers" (with Charles Simic, 1976).
His honors include the Bollingen Prize, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Edgar Allen Poe Prize and a Rockefeller Foundation award, as well as fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. He is a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He currently teaches at Columbia University.
Dr. Stephanie Powell Watts is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lehigh University. She earned her Master of Arts and PhD degrees from the University of Missouri where she was a Gus T. Ridgel fellow. Her stories, essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals including Obsidian III, the African American Review, the Oxford American and New Stories from the South: Best Short Fiction of 2007. She has received honors and awards for her work by the Atlantic Monthly and the Associated Writing Programs. She is currently at work on a novel.
Bob Watts, a Professor of Practice in Creative Writing for the Department of English, holds an MA in Creative Writing from North Carolina State University and the Creative Writing PhD in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, New York Quarterly, and The Southeast Review, among other journals. His first collection of poetry, Past Providence (David Robert Books, 2004) won the Stanzas Prize for excellence in poetic craft.