Max Frankel wrote in The New York Times Magazine, "There is only one correspondent truly covering the terror-filled front of old age...Donald Murray, the Boston Globe's weekly columnist, a poet in prose." And as we examine our own special terrors and those of people we love, Mr. Murray's candor and courage are a great comfort, and his straight-forward, graceful writing a delight. He will read from his just-published book, My Twice-Lived Life: A Memoir, which covers not only aging, but his difficult childhood, his experiences as a paratrooper in World War II, the loss of a 20-year-old daughter, his life as a writer and a teacher of writing, the accumulation of "stuff," and his fifty years of marriage to a woman marching into old age five years ahead of him.

He has won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing, and the University of New Hampshire, where he is Professor Emeritus of English, honored both his writing and his teaching by opening the Donald M. Murray Journalism Laboratory in 1997. His books on writing include Write to Learn, The Craft of Revision, Writer in the Newsroom, and Crafting a Life in Essay, Story, Poem. Although best known for his non-fiction, Mr. Murray also writes fiction and poetry.

Poet Lois Harrod is younger than Mr. Murray, but her most recent book of poetry, Spelling the World Backwards, also deals with age, centering as it does around her father's Alzheimer's and the efforts of her mother and the rest of the family to cope with his decline. (The title is based on a standard test for Alzheimer's; spelling "world" backwards is difficult even in the early stages of the disease.) Like Mr. Murray, Ms. Harrod is an enormously skilled and honest observer of both interior and exterior worlds, and she triumphs over even the greatest sadness through her clarity of vision and the brilliance of her writing.

This is Harrod's fourth book of poetry. Her previous books are Every Twinge a Verdict (1987), Crazy Alice (1991), and Part of the Deeper Sea (1997). She has also published two chapbooks and her work has appeared in many journals, from American Poetry Review, to Prairie Schooner, to Zone 3. She lives in Hopewell, NJ, and is a high school English teacher and the supervisor of Creative Writing at the New Jersey Governor's School of the Arts.

Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)

This series made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. Additional funding has been provided by The Bydale Foundation.

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