Visiting Writers Series Hosts CAConrad and Dawn Lundy Martin for Reading and Book Signing

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AMHERST, Mass.— The University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers presents a reading by CAConrad and Dawn Lundy Martin on Thursday, Feb. 6 at 8 p.m. in Old Chapel. The reading will be followed by a book signing and refreshments.

CAConrad is a 2019 Creative Capital Fellow and the author of nine books of poetry and essays. Their “While Standing in Line for Death” received the 2018 Lambda Award. A recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, they also received the “Believer Magazine” Book Award and the Gil Ott Book Award. Their work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Danish, French and German. They teach regularly at Columbia University and at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Influenced by Eileen Myles, Audre Lorde, Alice Notley and Emily Dickinson, Conrad writes poems in which stark images of sex, violence and defiance build a bridge between fable and confession. They are a visiting faculty member for spring semester 2020 at UMass Amherst.

Dawn Lundy Martin is a poet, essayist and conceptual video artist. She is the author of four books of poems, “Good Stock Strange Blood;” “Life in a Box is a Pretty Life,” which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry; “DISCIPLINE; A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering;” and three limited edition chapbooks. Most recently, she co-edited with Erica Hunt an anthology, “Letters to the Future: BLACK WOMEN / Radical WRITING.” Her nonfiction can be found in “The New Yorker,” “Harper’s,” “n+1” and elsewhere. Martin is a professor of English in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. She is the recipient of the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Celebrating its 65th year, the Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging and established writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. The series is sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative and made possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, the English department and others.

All events are free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible. More information on the event is available on Facebook.