Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Jericho Brown<\/a> will give a reading for the opening of the 60th anniversary season of the University of Rochester<\/a>\u2019s Hyam Plutzik Memorial Reading Series<\/a>\u2014one of the oldest literary reading series in the United States, and one that has brought such figures as John Ashbery, Louise Gl\u00fcck, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, and many others to the University for readings and discussions that are free and open to the public. The reading is part of the University\u2019s Meliora Weekend<\/a>\u00a0schedule of events.<\/p>\n Friday, September 30 at 3:45 p.m.<\/em> As\u00a0part of the Plutzik Series\u2019 60th anniversary year and\u00a0Meliora Weekend<\/a> celebration, Jericho Brown will give a reading from his recent works. A reception with the author will follow in the Plutzik Library.<\/p>\n Brown is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing and the director of the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Jennifer Grotz, an award-winning poet, director of Bread Loaf Writers\u2019 Conference in Vermont, and professor of English<\/a> at Rochester, says: \u201cWhile engaging with timeless subjects such as eros, death, and the natural world, Jericho\u2019s poems are also finely tuned to our American cultural moment.\u201d Brown \u201cis quite simply one of the best poets working today, and we\u2019re delighted to have him opening the 60th year of the Plutzik Reading Series.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown is the author of The Tradition<\/em> (2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2020, and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His first book, Please<\/em> (New Issues, 2008), won the 2009 American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament<\/em> (Copper Canyon, 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by the trade publication Library Journal<\/em>, Coldfront<\/em>, and the Academy of American Poets.<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s reading\u00a0begins at 3:45 p.m., Friday, September 30, at the Hawkins-Carlson Room at Rush Rhees Library. The reading will be followed by a reception in the Plutzik Library. The Plutzik anniversary season<\/a> continues with five more events through spring 2023.<\/p>\n The reading series is named for the poet Hyam Plutzik, who joined the faculty of Rochester\u2019s English department in 1945 and served as the Deane Professor of Poetry and Rhetoric. With the exception of one year, which he spent at Yale University on a Ford Foundation Faculty Fellowship, he remained at Rochester until his death from cancer in 1962.<\/p>\n Plutzik\u2019s death at age 50 cut short an extraordinary career in which he had published three collections of poetry, and been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for all three of them. A dedicated teacher, Plutzik believed fervently in the power of hearing poetry and prose read aloud at the podium. In 1958, he began bringing contemporary writers to give readings on campus. Following his death, the series was endowed through the generosity of his family and renamed after him.<\/p>\n Grotz calls Plutzik \u201can early example of the poet-scholar.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough creative writing courses are pretty ubiquitous now in colleges and universities, this was not always the case,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The series has offered \u201ca marvelous influx of some of the most important voices in contemporary literature,\u201d Grotz adds, thereby deeply enriching the University\u2019s classrooms and conversations. \u201cStudents are often transformed by the opportunity to meet a writer known previously only on the page.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Plutzik Reading Series presents Jericho Brown<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nHawkins-Carlson Room, Rush Rhees Library<\/em>
\nFree and open to the public<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Series honors early poet-scholar Hyam Plutzik<\/strong><\/h3>\n