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November 14, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Poet Terrance Hayes to Read at Smith

Editor's note: For a photo of Terrance Hayes, e-mail Marti Hobbes.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.—The Poetry Center at Smith College will present poet Terrance Hayes at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5, in  Stoddard Auditorium. The event is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.

Displaying the range of what the Los Angeles Times calls “a bold virtuoso,” Hayes is one of the most compelling new voices in contemporary poetry. In poems that explore race, cultural heritage and masculinity, he invokes American icons from Marvin Gaye to Dr. Seuss, and in his ability to deliver anger into tenderness, he shares with us experiences that are uniquely his own and significantly American. As the poet Mary Karr writes, he “will disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.”

Hayes's first book of poetry, “Muscular Music” (1999) won both the Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His second, “Hip Logic” (2002), was chosen by Cornelius Eady as a National Poetry Series winner and also named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Since the publication of his third collection of poems, “Wind in a Box” (2006), Hayes has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a 2005 Best American Poetry selection.

A native of South Carolina, Hayes currently teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and children.

This event is an endowed reading in memory of Smith alumna Edith Oppenheimer Richman, Class of 1931, and will be followed by a book sale and signing. For further information, contact Cindy Furtek at (413) 585-4891 or Ellen Doré Watson, Poetry Center director, at (413) 585-3368.

Office of College Relations
Smith College
Garrison Hall
Northampton, Massachusetts 01063

Marti Hobbes
News Assistant
T (413) 585-2190
F (413) 585-2174
mhobbes@email.smith.edu

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