Poet-memoirist Mark Doty to read from his National Book Award-winning verse at University of Richmond April 9

March 26, 2009

Mark Doty, National Book Award-winning poet and New York Times best-selling author, will read selections from his work at the University of Richmond's Weinstein Hall, Brown-Alley Room, April 9 at 7 p.m..

Doty's collection of poems "Fire to Fire" won the National Book Award in 2008.The judges praised the poems for "ferocious compassion. With their praise for the world and their fierce accusation, their defiance and applause, they combine grief and glory in a music of crazy excelsis."

Doty's memoir "Dog Years" was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. His other work includes eight collections of poetry and four volumes of nonfiction. In 1993, "My Alexandria" earned Doty Great Britain's T.S. Eliot Prize, and he remains the only American poet to have won it.

The recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Doty is the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at the University of Houston.

For more information, call (804) 289-8287.