March 8, 2019

Visiting Writers Series to feature poets March 13, April 11

Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Language, Literature and Writing will host three poets during March and April as it concludes its 2018-19 Visiting Writers Series.

The series will feature Anders Carlson-Wee on Wednesday, March 13, and Sean Thomas Doherty and Gary Jackson on Thursday, April 11. Both visits, which are free and open to the public, begin at 7 p.m. in the J.W. Jones Student Union Living Room. Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, GreenTower Press, and the Department of Language, Literature and Writing sponsor the series.

Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of “The Low Passions,” and his work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily and The Sun. His debut chapbook, “Dynamite,” won the Frost Place Chapbook Prize, and he received the 2017 Poetry International Prize.

He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Vanderbilt University and lives in Minneapolis.

Sean Thomas Dougherty was born in New York City and grew up in Brooklyn, New York; Toledo, Ohio; and Manchester, New Hampshire. He comes from a diverse family with an African-American stepfather and a mother of mixed European descent. His extended family, he says, is diverse “as the true face of America.” Publisher’s Weekly describes Dougherty as “a blue-collar, Rust Belt romantic to his generous, enthusiastic core,” and Dorianne Laux praises him as “the gypsy punk heart of American poetry.” 

He is the author of 13 books, including “The Second O of Sorrow,” “All You Ask for is Longing: Poems 1994-2014,” “Scything Grace” and “Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line,” which was a finalist for Binghamton University's Milton Kessler Poetry Book Award. His awards include a Fulbright Lectureship to the Balkans, two PA Council on the Arts Fellowships in poetry and an appearance in Best American Poetry 2014.

Known for his dynamic readings, he has performed at hundreds of venues, universities and festivals, including the Detroit Art Festival, the Dodge Poetry Festival, the Old Dominion Literary Festival and across Albania and Macedonia, where he appeared on national television, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, works as a medical technician, tours, hustles and writes poems about stuff that happens in his city between the lake and the highway, and elsewhere.

Gary Jackson is the author of “Missing You, Metropolis,” which was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Callaloo, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Crab Orchard Review, and he’s been published in “Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology.” He was featured in the 2013 New American Poetry Series by the Poetry Society of America and is the recipient of a Bread Loaf fellowship.

Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, he received his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at the University of New Mexico and has taught in Albuquerque and in Anyang, South Korea. In 2013, he joined the Department of English at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, where he teaches in the MFA program as well as undergraduate creative writing and is the associate poetry editor at Crazyhorse.

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.

For more information, contact Daniel Biegelson, the director of the Visiting Writers Series and a Northwest instructor of English, at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 660.562.1266.