Voigt and McCreary to Present Work

Author: Kate DeForest

This week the College will be hosting readings for two notable authors: Ellen Bryant Voight, today, March 6 and Lew McCreary, on Thursday. McCreary's reading will be preceded by a screening of the film "Minus Man," based upon McCreary's novel of the same title, and willshown tonight.

Voight, current Poet Laureate of Vermont, is the author of six books of poetry, including "Kyrie," a collection of poems centered on the influenza epidemic of 1918 to 1919. Stephen Cramer wrote in the Nov. 24, 1999 issue of TheAtlantic Monthly, "Voigt's poetry has reflected her restless search for the means to unite two artistic impulses: to sing and to tell stories."

Trained from an early age as a classical pianist, Voight's poetry reflects the musicality of words and verse. Francine Prose writes of "Kyrie," "The beauty and intensity of Ellen Bryant Voight's sustained elegy leave us feeling much as we do after listening to Mozart's Requiem: grief stricken, transformed and exhalted."

She has been the recipient of grants from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as winning the Pushcart Prize and the Emily Clark Balch Award. She has published her work in both The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and was on the faculty of Bread Loaf at this summer's past writer's conference, where she both lectured and read.

Voight's reading will be held today at 4:30 p.m. in the Abernethey room in Starr Librar .

McCreary will be giving both a reading from his fiction and a talk on whether the experience of having a novel made into a movie has affected the way in which he writes fiction. He is the author of two novels, "Mount's Mistake" and "Minus Man," the movie version of the latter being the subject of tonight's screening in Warner Hemicycle at 7:30 p.m. He will be reading selections from his fiction on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in the Grand Salon of Le Chateau. All are encouraged to attend.