Inaugural Event for Women’s Poetry Initiative

Poet Kathryn Stripling Byer was the inaugural featured speaker in a series sponsored by the newly-formed Women's Poetry Initiative at St. Francis College and the Women's Studies Minor on Wednesday, March 20.

Stripling Byer read "Mountain Time" from the collection Black Shawl and a number of poems from her new collection Descent. She then answered questions from the audience about her poems and the art of writing.

Each March, a female poet from outside the New York area will come to St. Francis College to help showcase regional voices in the world of women's poetry.

Biography:
Kathryn Stripling Byer was raised on a farm in Southwest Georgia, where the material for much of her first poetry originated. Her poetry, prose, and fiction have appeared widely, including Hudson Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and Southern Poetry Review. Often anthologized, her work has also been featured online, where she maintains the blogs "Here, Where I Am," and "The Mountain Woman."

Her first book of poetry, The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, was published in the AWP Award Series in 1986, followed by the Lamont (now Laughlin) prize-winning Wildwood Flower, from LSU Press. Her subsequent collections have been published in the LSU Press Poetry Series, receiving various awards, including the Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Poetry Award, and the Roanoke-Chowan Award. She served for five years as North Carolina's first woman poet laureate. She lives in the mountains of western North Carolina with her husband and three dogs.

St. Francis College, founded in 1859 by the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, is located in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y. Since its founding, the College has pursued its Franciscan mission to provide an affordable, high-quality education to students from New York City’s five boroughs and beyond.

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St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
www.sfc.edu