Poet Patrick Rosal to Visit Eastern

Written by Kate Harner

Willimantic, CT -- The Visiting Writers Series and Eastern Connecticut State University's English Department will present a poetry reading by Patrick Rosal at 7:30 p.m. on March 11 in the Student Center Theater. A book signing will follow the reading. The public is invited. Admission is free.

Rosal has written two full-length poetry collections: "Uprock Headspin Scramble and Drive," which received the Members' Choice Award from Asian American Writers' Workshop, and "My American Kundiman," which received the Association of Asian American Studies 2006 Book Award in Poetry and the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award.

Rosal was awarded a Fulbright grant as a U.S. Scholar to the Philippines in 2009. His poems and essays have been published in journals such as the American Poetry Review, the Harvard Review and Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, among others. Rosal has received numerous awards, including the Allen Ginsberg Award, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Arts and Letters Prize and Best of the Net. His chapbook "Uncommon Denominators" received the Palanquin Poetry Series Award from the University of South Carolina. He has taught at various colleges, has conducted workshops in Alabama prisons through Auburn University and has written the documentary film "Camp Roxas," directed by Alex Munoz. He is the son of immigrants from the Ilocos region of the Philippines and is a New Jersey native.

For more information, please contact Maureen McDonnell at mcdonnellm@easternct.edu.