Jan Beatty and Finalists for the Paterson Poetry Prize Reading April 6

The Distinguished Poets Series of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College presents a reading by Jan Beatty, winner of the 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize, and finalists for the Prize.

The reading will take place on Saturday, April 6, 2019 at 1 p.m. at the historic Hamilton Club Building, 32 Church Street, in downtown Paterson. Parking is available at the PCCC parking lot on College Blvd., between Memorial Drive and Church Street. The program is free and an open reading follows.

Jan Beatty’s books include Jackknife (2017, winner, Paterson Poetry Prize), The Switching Yard (2013), Red Sugar (2008, Finalist, Paterson Poetry Prize), Boneshaker (2002, Finalist, Milton Kessler Award), and Mad River (1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize), all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. For the past twenty years, Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show featuring national writers on NPR affiliate WESA-FM. Awards include publication in Best American Poetry 2013, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, two PCA fellowships, and the Creative Achievement Award from the Heinz Foundation. She is a professor of English at Carlow University, where she directs the creative writing program, runs the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops, and teaches in the MFA program.

Paterson Poetry Prize finalists also participating in the reading, include: Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Arrival: Poems (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL); Jim Daniels, Rowing Inland (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI); Nicole Homer, Pecking Order (Write Bloody Publishing, Los Angeles, CA); Meghan O’Rourke, Sun in Days (W. W. Norton & Co., New York, NY); and Cindy Veach, Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press, Fort Lee, NJ).

The Hamilton Club Building is wheelchair accessible; large print materials and FM assistive listening devices available on request. The Poetry Center at PCCC is funded, in part, by a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.