As part of the continuing Plutzik Reading Series, the Department of English is hosting award-winning poet and author Tom Sleigh. His most recent collections include Space Walk (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) and Far Side of the Earth: Poems (2003), which was named an Honor Book by the Massachusetts Society for the Book. He authored the latter collection after a serious illness, which he has said helped him to see large metaphysical and historical contexts in small things. In his writing, he often explores the connection between historical facts and what he considers fate.
Sleigh has received numerous awards, including an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America, an Individual Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace Fund, and grants from the Guggenheim and Ingram Merill foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition, he recently wrote the play Rubber, produced as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City.
Sleigh earned his master's degree from Johns Hopkins University and now teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Hunter College. The Plutzik Reading Series was started in 1962 in honor of University of Rochester faculty member and poet Hyam Plutzik to offer the Rochester community readings by the finest contemporary literary artists.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact the Department of English at (585) 275-9255 or visit www.rochester.edu/College/ENG/plutzik/.