Writers Conversation - Poets Panel

The 2010–11 season of Writers Conversations, curated by Institute Artist-in-Residence Derek Bermel, began with a reading and discussion with a younger generation of groundbreaking poets.

Tracy K. Smith, the host of the panel, is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. Her second collection of poems, Duende (Graywolf Press), received the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Thomas Sayers Ellis is Assistant Professor of CreativeWriting at Sarah Lawrence College and a core faculty member of the Lesley University Low Residency MFA Program. He won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares for his first full-length collection, The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press).

Suji Kwock Kim’s first book, Notes from the Divided Country (Louisiana State University Press, 2003), won the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Whiting Writers’ Award, and The Nation/Discovery Award.

Wendy S.Walters’s work resides at the intersection of the poem, essay, and lyric drama. She is the author of Longer I Wait, More You Love Me (Palm Press, 2009) and a chapbook, Birds of Los Angeles (Palm Press, 2005).