Memphis poet, educator to give Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series lecture at MSU
Contact: Sasha Steinberg
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擬emphis, Tennessee-based poet and educator Marcus Wicker will deliver a public reading Thursday [April 11] as part of the 幺力视频 Department of English鈥檚 Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series.
Free to all, Wicker鈥檚 presentation begins at 4 p.m. in Mitchell Memorial Library鈥檚 John Grisham Room. A public reception and book signing will follow.
Wicker also is scheduled to speak with students in the English department鈥檚 Intermediate Poetry class.
Established through an endowment from widow Alice Carol Caldwell and family, the Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series serves as a memorial to Tutweiler native Price Caldwell, who served for more than 20 years as an MSU associate professor of English and died in 2015. He also founded and directed the university鈥檚 creative writing program, along with serving as president and vice president for the Southern Literary Festival organization.
Wicker is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, The Missouri Review鈥檚 Miller Audio Prize, as well as fellowships from both Cave Canem and the Fine Arts Work Center. His first collection 鈥淢aybe the Saddest Thing鈥 (Harper Perennial) is a National Poetry Series winner and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award.
His poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Oxford American and Boston Review. His second book 鈥淪ilencer鈥濃攁lso an Image Award finalist鈥攚as published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017 and won the Society of Midland Authors Award, as well as the Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for New Voices. Wicker teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Memphis, and he is the poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review. For more, visit .
Additional information about Wicker鈥檚 campus visit and lecture can be obtained from Michael Kardos, MSU associate professor of English and creative writing program co-director, at 662-325-3644 and MKardos@english.msstate.edu.
Learn more about MSU鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences and its Department of English at and .
MSU is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at .