JEFFREY
HARRISON of Dover, MA, is the author of three books of poetry.
His first, The Singing Underneath, was selected by James Merrill
for the National Poetry Series. A review in Chelsea called his second,
Signs of Arrival, “a work of genius…(It) accomplishes nothing less
than transformation.” About his third and recent book, Feeding the
Fire, the New York Times Book Review comments, “The poems…chronicle
our growth from the cluelessness of childhood to that slightly greater
state of awareness called adulthood…We don't become smarter as we grow
older, Harrison seems to be saying; we just have more to be aware of.”
He has received NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, the
Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, and the Lavan Younger Poets Award
from the Academy of American Poets.
MARY
GAITSKILL of Rhinebeck, NY, is the author of two story collections,
Bad Behavior (1988) and Because They Wanted To (1997), and
a novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991), and her work has been featured
in the O. Henry Prize collection and Best American Short Stories.
Ginger Danto says in a New York Times Book Review of Two Girls,
“It is a credit to Ms. Gaitskill's prose, with its fine storyteller's
pace and brilliant metaphors, that we are drawn along, loath to abandon
this grim story.” In a later New York Times Book Review, Craig
Seligman says of Because They Wanted To: “Sentence by sentence,
Mary Gaitskill charts the twists and turns of emotion and desire, in fanatically
analytical prose that zips along in a fever of self-consciousness that
would seem loony if her observations weren't so sane...A lot of these
stories are just about perfect.”
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale 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.