Sept. 20, 2018

Award-winning poets kick off Visiting Writers Series

By Kelsey Johnson, communication assistant

Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Language, Literature and Writing will host authors Frank Montesonti and Peter Mishler to begin the 2018-19 Visiting Writers Series at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, in the J.W. Jones Student Union Living Room.

The event is free and open to the public. Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, GreenTower Press, and the Department of Language, Literature and Writing are sponsors of the series.

Frank Montesonti is the winner of the 2011 Barrow Street Book Prize chosen by D.A. Powell for his full-length poetry collection, “Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope.” He is also the author of the poetry collection “Hope Tree: How to Prune Fruit Trees” and chapbooks, “A Civic Pageant” and “Arts Grant,” which is the winner of the Northwest’s 2017 GreenTower Press Midwest Chapbook Contest and is available through GreenTower Press.

Montesonti’s poems have been featured in journals such as Poet Lore, AQR, Tin House, Black Warrior Review and Poems and Plays.

Peter Mishler is the author of “Fludde,” a book of poems selected by Dean Young as the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry for Sarabande Books. The title poem of “Fludde” was published in “Best New Poets,” an annual anthology of poems from emerging writers.

Mishler lives in Kansas City, Missouri, and is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Syracuse University. He organizes a contemporary poetry feature for Literary Hub, a daily website that highlights popular literary stories.

“These readings open a space for us to come together and listen to how someone else attempts to understand and navigate their world,” Daniel Biegelson, the director of the Visiting Writers Series and a Northwest instructor of English, said. “Students can gain a better understanding of their own values as well as the value of expression and attention to one’s inner life, attention to others and attention to the world around them.”

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to promote creativity, diversity, and freedom of expression as a living and meaningful art form that provides its audience with a better understanding of people and the world.

The series continues with Diana Joseph, a short story author, and C.D. DyVanc, an award-winning journalist on Wednesday, Nov. 14.

For more information, contact Daniel Biegelson, at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 660.562.1266.