Events Calendar

Authors, GC Waldrep & Karen An-Hwei Lee will read from their latest work.

G.C. Waldrep was born and raised in the South. He earned his BA from Harvard University, a PhD in history from Duke University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. His collections of poetry include Goldbeater’s Skin (2003), which won the Colorado Prize for Poetry; Disclamor (2007); Archicembalo (2009), winner of the Dorset Prize; Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (2011), a collaborative book of poems with John Gallaher; the long poem Testament (2015); feast gently (2018); and The Opening Ritual (2024). His chapbooks include The Batteries (2006), One Way No Exit (2008), Szent László Hotel (2011), Susquehanna (2013). Waldrep’s work is known for its lush musicality. In an interview, he noted, “I trained as a singer and the idea that poetry should be performative on some basis—that it should live in the tongue—is important to me. There are poems that don’t do that—or don’t do that primarily, that are meant to be transmitted through the page. But I hope for my work that the sound quality is important.”
 
Waldrep’s editing projects include Homage to Paul Celan (with Ilya Kaminsky, 2011) and The Arcadia Project (with Joshua Corey, 2012). Waldrep is also editor of West Branch and editor at large for the Kenyon Review. His honors and awards include prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, and residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Campbell Corner Foundation. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University and directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of The Maze of Transparencies (Ellipsis Press, 2019), Phyla of Joy (Tupelo, 2012), Ardor (Tupelo, 2008), and In Medias Res (Sarabande, 2004), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her first novel, Sonata in K, was published in 2017. A book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora (Cambria, 2013), was selected for the Cambria Sinophone World Series, and she is the translator of Doubled Radiance: Poetry & Prose of Li Qingzhao (Singing Bone Press, 2018), the first volume in English to collect Li’s work in both genres.

Lee’s work appears in journals such as The American Poet, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Journal of Feminist Studies & Religion, Iowa Review, and IMAGE: Art, Faith, & Mystery, and she was recognized by the Prairie Schooner / Glenna Luschei Award. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, Lee currently serves in the administration at Point Loma Nazarene University in Southern California. She earned an MFA from the Program in Literary Arts at Brown University and a PhD in British & American Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. 

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Readings at Prairie Lights are sponsored by the Writing University.}