For those of you feeling the need to express yourself through creative writing, here’s an opportunity to work with renowned Kansas poet Eric McHenry in Liberal, KS next week! He will speak at the Seward County Community College Library on Monday, August 29th at 12:00 pm CT. McHenry hails from a long line of Topeka natives, dating back almost eight generations – so he knows (and loves) this land. Listen to our full interview by clicking the link at the top of this page. We talk about the joy of working with students and writers across the state, as well as his thoughts on the rich tradition of poetry in our rural region.
McHenry is part of the Saints Scribe program through a grant by the American Library Association with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Three other speakers will take part during the fall semester as part of the Saints Scribe program.
ABOUT THE POET: Eric McHenry attended Beloit College, and then did graduate work at Boston University where he earned his MA in creative writing. McHenry's poems have been featured in many publications, including, The Harvard Review, Slate, and Poetry Northwest, whose editors named McHenry winner of the Theodore Roethke Prize for best poems published in the magazine in 2010. His criticism appears in The New York Times Book Review and Salon. He is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, and Potscrubber Lullabies won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. In April 2015 he was announced as the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Kansas. He currently lives in Lawrence, KS and is an Associate Professor of English, teaching creative writing, at Washburn University of Topeka.
Click here to read a particularly Kansas-centric poem by Eric McHenry, published in Slate Magazine.
