Poet Gray Jacobik to Read at Eastern

Written by Kate Harner

Willimantic, Conn. - Award-winning poet Gray Jacobik, professor emeritus at Eastern Connecticut State University, will read from her book, "Little Boy Blue: A Memoir in Verse," at 3:30 p.m. on April 12 in the Paul E. Johnson Sr. Community Conference Room in the J. Eugene Smith Library. Light refreshments and a book signing will follow the reading. The public is invited. Admission is free.

            Jacobik is the author of "Brave Disguises," "Sandpainting," "Paradise Poems," "Jane's Song," "The Double Task" and "The Surface of Last Scattering." She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the AWP Poetry Series Award, the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, the Emily Dickinson Prize, the Yeats Prize and the Juniper Prize. She has also received more than 20 nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Jacobik has served as the Robert Frost poet-in-residence at the Frost Place. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, such as "Best American Poetry," "The Kenyon Review," "Connecticut Review" and "Ploughshares," among others. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing and an Artist's Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Jacobik served as a professor of literature at Eastern from 1991 to 2004.

            For more information on the reading, which is sponsored by Eastern's Department of English and Women's Studies Program, contact Miranda Lau at (860) 465-4570 or laum@easternct.edu.