Poet
and writer Gary Gildner visits us from Idaho’s Clearwater Mountains. The
author of twenty books, including poetry, fiction, and memoir, he is best known
for his nine collections of poetry, including Blue Like the Heavens: New and
Selected Poems and The Bunker in Parsley Fields, which won the 1996
Iowa Poetry Prize, and his latest, Cleaning a Rainbow. He has also written
two novels, three collections of short stories, including Somewhere Geese Are
Flying: New and Selected Stories, and two memoirs, My Grandfather’s Book
and The Warsaw Sparks, which he wrote while he was a Fulbright Lecturer
at the University of Warsaw and coach of the city’s baseball team. Gildner has
received the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Pushcart Prizes for Fiction
and Nonfiction, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams and Theodore
Roethke poetry prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,
Breadloaf, MacDowell, and Yaddo.
Peter
Selgin’s first book of short stories, Drowning Lessons (University
of Georgia Press) won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award. His autobiographical novel,
Life Goes to the Movies, was a two-time finalist for the James Jones First
Novel Fellowship and Second Place Winner of the AWP Award, and will be published
in April of 2009 by Dzanc Books. Selgin’s work has garnered six Pushcart Nominations
and appeared in dozens of publications, including Salon.com, The Sun, Glimmer
Train, Poets & Writers, Colorado Review, Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review,
and Best American Essays 2006. He has written a children’s book (S.S.
Gigantic Across the Atlantic) and a book on fiction writing (By Cunning &
Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers), and he edits the
journal Alimentum: The Literature of Food. He is also an artist, and his
illustrations and paintings have been featured in The New Yorker, Gourmet,
Time Out New York, and many other publications. www.peterselgin.com
All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.
Suggested
Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)
Programs and events at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, and the Orchard Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of the Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government.