What
a special way to celebrate Father's Day! Acclaimed poet Michael
S. Harper, and his poet daughter, Rachel
M. Harper, will be driving down from Providence, RI, to read
for us and talk about what it's like to raise — or be raised by — a talented
poet.
Mr. Harper is a professor of English at Brown University where he has taught since 1970, and he was the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988-93. He has published ten books of poetry, two of which were nominated for the National Book Award — Dear John, Dear Coltrane and Images of Kin: New and Selected Poems. Images of Kin won the Melville-Cane Award from the Poetry Society of America. Another collection, History is Your Own Heartbeat, won the Black Academy of Arts and Letters Award for poetry, and Honorable Amendments won the George Kent Poetry Award, presented by Gwendolyn Brooks. Mr. Harper is co-editor of Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep, an anthology of African American poetry from 1945 to the present, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 1995. He has received numerous honorary degrees and in 1996 Bowdoin College hosted a four-day "Celebrating Harper" Festival.
Rachel Harper has had poems published in Prairie Schooner and African American Review. She has also had fiction published in Chicago Review and she is completing her first novel.
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by grants from the Bydale Foundation and the Gannett 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 Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.