Center for Writers Reading/Workshop Features Acclaimed Poet

The University of Southern Mississippi Center for Writers will host a reading on Friday, Oct. 22 featuring the acclaimed poet Michael Dumanis.

The reading is thethird in the Center's 2010 Visiting Writers Series and will be held at 7 p.m. in the International Center Auditorium, room 101. During his visit, Dumanis will also conduct a poetry workshop with graduate students in the Center for Writers.

Michael Dumanis is the author of “My Soviet Union” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), winner of the 2006 Juniper Prize for Poetry. About the collection The Boston Reviewwrites, “My Soviet Union leaps deftly among its personae, dictions, and poetic styles, always testing the capacity of its linguistic inventiveness to contend with the facts of capital-H History. The poet's formal dexterity and imaginative scope are not only impressive but dizzying, even delightful.”  Publisher's Weekly has this to say about “My Soviet Union”: “Dumanis overwhelms with intelligence and emotion. He is certainly a poet to watch.”

Dumanis also co-edited the younger poets anthology “Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century,” with poet Cate Marvin. He is a two-time Academy of American Poets Prize winner and the recipient of Fulbright, Truman Capote, and James Michener Fellowships. He holds a bachelor of art degree from Johns Hopkins, a master of fine arts from the University of Iowa, and a doctorate from the University of Houston.

Born in the former Soviet Union, Dumanis has lived in New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Bulgaria, and Texas, and now makes his home in Cleveland, Ohio, where is an assistant professor of English at Cleveland State University and serves as director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, a small literary press.

The Visiting Writers Series is one of the cornerstones of the Center for Writers and has brought more than 150 nationally regarded writers of literary fiction and nonfiction poetry to campus for the community's benefit.

The Center for Writers is affiliated with the graduate creative writing program at Southern Miss and is housed in the Department of English. The program has awarded more than 275 master's and doctoral degrees through the department since 1977.

Admission to the Dumanis reading is free. For more information, contact the Center for Writers at 601.266.5600 or Dr. Angela Ball at 601.266.4182.