Jackson Poetry Reading
Nationally known poets read from their work on this special occasion, held each year in April.
Visiting guest speakers have included such writers as:
- Lee Smith ’67, novelist: Guests on Earth, On Agate Hill, Black Mountain Breakdown, Fair and Tender Ladies
- Matthew Klam M.A. ’92, fiction: Sam the Cat and Other Stories
- Natasha Trethewey M.A. ’91, poet: Native Guard (Pulitzer Prize for poetry). Served as U.S. poet laureate, 2012-14
- Claudia Emerson, poet: Figure Studies and Late Wife (Pulitzer Prize for poetry)
- Edward P. Jones, novelist: The Known World (Pulitzer Prize for fiction)
- Jamaica Kincaid, novelist: At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, A Small Place, Autobiography of My Mother, and My Brother
- Nick Flynn, memoirist and poet: Another Bull**** Night in Suck City
- George Saunders, essayist, novelist: The Braindead Megaphon, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
- Tom Drury, novelist: The End of Vandalism, The Black Brook, Hunts in Dreams, The Driftless Area, Pacific
- Amy Leach, essayist: Things That Are