Genesee Reading Series: Karla Merrifield & William Heyen

Now in its 36th year, the Genesee Reading Series is a smorgasbord for your literary palate. Come every month on the second Tuesday, and by the end of the year, you will have feasted on the work of 24 regional authors (some prominent, some emerging; writers of fiction, poetry, essay, creative nonfiction, memoir). It’s up close and personal in the intimate Performance Space upstairs. Stay afterwards and talk to the authors while eating cookies.

William Heyen is Professor of English/Poet in Residence Emeritus at the College at Brockport, his undergraduate alma mater. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio University, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from SUNY. A former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in American Literature in Germany, he has received NEA, Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts and Letters awards, among others.  His work has appeared in hundreds of anthologies, and in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Southern Review, and numerous other magazines.

He is the editor or author of more than thirty books including Noise in the Trees, an American Library Association Notable Book for 1975; Crazy Horse in Stillness, winner of 1997’s Small Press Book Award for Poetry; Shoah Train: Poems, a Finalist for the 2004 National Book Award; A Poetics of Hiroshima, a Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle selection for 2010. Three new books of poetry (Straight’s Suite for Craig Cotter & Frank O’Hara, The Football Corporations, and Hiroshima Suite) and the first four volumes of his massive journal (The Cabin, Hannelore, Poker & Poets ,Too Many Angels), appeared 2013-2016 as did Crazy Horse & the Custers which includes 35 paintings in response to his poems by DeLoss McGraw. Etruscan Press published The Candle, a volume of 45 years of his Holocaust poetry, in 2016. The Candle was a main CLSC selection for 2017.

Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 700+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 13 books to her credit, the newest of which is Psyche’s Scroll, a book-length poem, published by The Poetry Box Select in June 2018. Forthcoming in June 2019 is her full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North, from Cirque Press. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills Publishing) received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. She is a member of Just Poets (Rochester, NY), the Florida State Poetry Society, the New Mexico Poetry Society, and The Author’s Guild. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet Redux, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.