Acclaimed Writer Peter Meinke to read at Georgia Southern

September 4, 2007

Award-winning poet and fiction writer Peter Meinke will read from his work on Monday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. in Room 1115 of the College of Education Building at Georgia Southern University.Earlier in the day, Meinke will meet with creative writing students for an informal question and answer session. The reading, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Department of Writing and Linguistics.

Meinke has published fifteen books of poems, seven in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, the most recent being The Contracted World (2006), Zinc Fingers (2001), Scars (1996), and Liquid Paper (1996). His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic and dozens of other magazines

His poetry has received many awards, including two NEA Fellowships and three prizes from the Poetry Society of America. His book of short stories, The Piano Tuner, won the 1986 Flannery O’Connor Award; another collection, Unheard Music, will be published this fall, along with his book on reading and writing poems, The Shape of Poetry.

Meinke directed the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College for many years, and has often been writer-in-residence at other colleges and universities. From 2003 through 2005 he held the Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University.

He and his wife, the artist Jeanne Clark, have lived in St. Petersburg, Fla., since 1966. In the spring of 2008 he’ll be Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kan.