HIGH POINT, N.C., Nov. 10, 2011 – High Point University students and local high school writers will have the opportunity to learn from one of the most prominent poets in America, Jorie Graham, at the 41st annual Phoenix Literary Festival, hosted by HPU. The highlight of the festival begins at 7 p.m. on Nov. 17 in the Extraordinaire Cinema in the University Center. The event is open to the public.
Creative writers will converge with more than 100 HPU and area high school students as part of the festival. Each student has the opportunity to submit poetry and works of fiction to the event judges. Published authors of poetry and fiction will also discuss submissions by the students during a workshop directed by Graham.
“Phoenix is unique to HPU, and has always been held on this campus,” says Georgeanna Sellers, assistant professor of English. “Students at HPU will enjoy hearing Jorie Graham read her work and present a workshop on writing; it will give our students more strategies and techniques to bring to their own work.”
Graham, is the author of numerous award-winning poetry collections, including “The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994,” for which she won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1996.
Currently, Graham serves as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and formerly served as the chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1997 until 2003.
“Hosting the Phoenix Festival is not only a great opportunity for HPU students and local high school students to have their work read, judged and acknowledged by the wonderful poetry and creative writing faculty of the Department of English, but it is an extension of the classroom that provides these writers another voice and perspective that they most likely would never be privileged to hear,” says Sellers.
At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education in an inspiring environment with caring people.℠ HPU, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a liberal arts institution with over 4,200 undergraduate and graduate students from 51 countries and 46 states at campuses in High Point and Winston-Salem. It is ranked by US News and World Report at No. 3 among Regional Colleges in the South. Forbes.com ranks HPU in the top 7 percent among “America’s Best Colleges.” Parade Magazine lists HPU in the top 25 private schools in the nation. HPU was selected in the 2010-2011 list of “Colleges of Distinction,” as well as one of the top green schools in the country by the Sierra Club. The university offers 50 undergraduate majors, 43 undergraduate minors and 10 graduate degree programs. It is accredited by the Commission of Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and is a member of the NCAA, Division I and the Big South Conference. Visit High Point University on the Web at highpoint.edu.
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Pam Haynes
Communication Specialist
336-841-9055
[email protected]