Each year, a diverse selection of fiction writers, essayists, poets, magazine editors, and publishers visit the University of Illinois Springfield to give readings, talks, and craft workshops. English Department students have the opportunity to work closely with
professionals in the field, gaining valuable insights into the business and practice of creative writing in the twenty-first century.
CWPS is currently funded through the generous support of the UIS College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For more information, or to help support CWPS, please contact Dr. Meagan Cass at mcass3@uis.edu.
CWPS Spring 2013 Schedule
Thursday, 2/7: Natasha Trethewey- 2012 US Poet Laureate
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet will sign
copies of her books and read a selection
of poems beginning at 6:30pm in the 
museum’s Union Theater.
(Galleries, journeys, and museum store
will open at 6pm.)
The presentation is free. A $50 combination ticket is available for a dinner with the Poet in the Library that will follow at approximately 8pm. The $50 ticket will include the presentation, wine, dinner, dessert and a signed book copy (no exhcanges or refunds granted).
Natasha Trethewey, the 2012 US Poet Laureate
Thursday, February 07, 2013 at 6:30 PM
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum–Union Theater
212 North Sixth Street
Springfield, IL 62701
Phone: (217) 558-8934
Website: www.PresidentLincoln.org
E-Mail: clare.thorpe@illinois.gov
Map & Directions
https://alplmfoundation.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=539990
2/9: Poetry Performance Workshop 
1—4pm Vachel Lindsay Home Historic Site
The Vachel Lindsay Association is excited to collaborate with the Springfield Area Arts Council on the regional and statewide “Poetry Out Loud” competition by offering a special poetry performance workshop at the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site. Noted actors Kevin Purcell and Aasne Vigessa of Over the Moon Productions will lead this workshop – to be held from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. RSVP to vachellindsay@gmail.com!
4/12 : Mary Jo Bang
6pm Brookens Auditorium
Mary Jo Bang was born in 1946 in 
Waynesville, Missouri and grew up
in Ferguson, MO, which is now a
suburb of St. Louis. She received a B.A.
and M.A. in Sociology from Northwestern
University, a B.A. in photography from the
Polytechnic of Central London, and an
M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University.
Bang is the author of five books of poems, including Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2007), The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (2004), The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of the Swans (2001), and Louise In Love (2001). Her first book, Apology for Want (1997), was chosen by Edward Hirsch for the 1996 Bakeless Prize.
About her most recent collection, Elegy, which traces the aftermath of her son’s death, Wayne Koestenbaum writes: “Mary Jo Bang’s remarkable elegies recall the late work of Ingeborg Bachmann—a febrile, recursive lyricism. Like Nietzsche or Plath, Bang flouts naysayers; luridly alive, she drives deep into aporia, her new, sad country. Her stanzas, sometimes spilling, sometimes severe, perform an uncanny death-song, recklessly extended—nearly to the breaking point.”
Bang’s work has been chosen three times for inclusion in the Best American Poetry series. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a “Discovery”/The Nation award, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Hodder Award from Princeton University. Her books Louise In Love and Elegy both received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript-in-progress.
Bang was the poetry co-editor of the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Washington University.
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/548
All UIS Creative Writing and Publishing Series events are free and open to the public. Invite your friends!
Generous support provided by the UIS College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
