AN EVENING OF POETRY & ART @ DREW UNIVERSITY

AN EVENING OF POETRY & ART Yusef Komunyakaa Global Distinguished Professor of English, New York University Speak Peace: American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children's Paintings

WHEN: Friday, January 11, 2013 WHERE: Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue, Madison RSVP ONLINE HERE

5:00 PM, Mead Hall Reception with MFA in Poetry faculty, including Drew's Distinguished Poet-in-Residence, Gerald Stern. Light dinner following at 5:30 P.M. 7:00 PM, Korn Gallery, Dorothy Young Center for the Arts Special viewing of the Speak Peace exhibit, on loan from the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, which features paintings by Vietnamese children on peace and war, accompanied by poems written in response by American children, veterans, and established poets. 7:30 PM, Concert Hall, Dorothy Young Center for the Arts Readings by Pulitzer-prize winning poet and Vietnam War correspondent Yusef Komunyakaa and the acclaimed Lebanese poet and translator Khaled Mattawa. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. His upbringing in the racially charged South and his tour in Vietnam in the 1970s prove to be the focal point of much of his poetry. Komunyakaa attended the University of Colorado when he returned to the States and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and sociology in 1975. Continuing his studies, he earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Colorado State University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Irvine. Khaled Mattawa was born in Benghazi, Libya where he had his primary education. In 1979 he emigrated to the United States. He lived in the South for many years, finishing high school in Louisiana and completing bachelors degrees in political science and economics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He went on to earn an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University where he taught creative writing and won an Academy of American Poets award. A professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge, he has published poems in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Callaloo, Poetry East, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review and The Pushcart Prize anthology. Please note that parking is available in the Admissions Office Lot or the Tilghman House Lot off of Lancaster Road.