Poet to read from her works

Poet Peggy Shumaker will read poetry at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, in the Governor’s Room of the Overman Student Center at Pittsburg State University. Shumaker is a featured guest in PSU’s Distinguished Visiting Writers Series.

Shumaker is the author of seven books. Her most recent books include “Just Breathe Normally,” a lyrical memoir about a freak bicycle accident, and “Blaze,” which pairs her poems with a collection of sensual Alaskan paintings by Kesler Woodward. Her previous books include “Underground Rivers,” “Wings Moist from the Other World,” “The Circle of Totems,” “Braided River,” and “Esperanza's Hair.” Her poems have also been published in Russia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and England.

Shumaker earned her B.A. in English and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She was writer in residence for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, where she worked with prison inmates, honors students, gang members, deaf adults, teen parents, little kids, library patrons, and elderly folks.

Shumaker won a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several awards for teaching. Shumaker was formerly chairperson of the English Department and director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She currently teaches in the low-residency Rainier Writing Workshop. Peggy Shumaker and her husband, Joe Usibelli, live in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The reading, which is free and open to the public, is cosponsored by the P.S.U. Student Fee Council and the English Department.

For more on Shumaker’s work: http://www.peggyshumaker.com/news.html
http://www.peggyshumaker.com/

---Pitt State---