Ninth Annual Denise Levertov Award with Patricia Hampl

May 24, 2012
7:00 pm
415 Westlake
Seattle, WA 98109

Co-sponsored by the SPU English Department, the Conference on Christianity and Literature, 
and the SPU MFA Program in Creative Writing

Patricia Hampl will read from her work and then take questions. This event is free and open to the public, with RSVP requested (click "Register" above to RSVP). Dessert reception to follow.

Hampl’s most recent book is The Florist’s Daughter, winner of numerous “best” and “year end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime, published in 2006 and now in paperback, was also one of the Times Notable Books; a portion was chosen for The Best Spiritual Writing 2005. Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education, her memoir about her Czech heritage, awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. This book and subsequent works have established her as an influential figure in the rise of autobiographical writing in the past 25 years. She is the author as well of two collections of poetry, Woman before an Aquarium, and Resort and Other Poems. And she has published Spillville, a meditation on Antonin Dvorak's 1893 summer in Iowa, with engravings by Steven Sorman. Virgin Time, about her Catholic upbringing and an inquiry into contemplative life, is available in a recent paperback.

The Denise Levertov Award is named for one of the twentieth century's greatest poets. Levertov, who spent her last years in Seattle, embraced the landscape and culture of the Pacific Northwest. Her identity as a Christian believer--a pilgrim whose faith was inextricably entwined with doubt--became another important facet of her work, particularly in her later poetry. The Levertov Award is presented annually in the spring to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition. Past recipients include poets Madeline DeFrees and Franz Wright, nonfiction writers Kathleen Norris, Thomas Lynch, and Eugene Peterson, fiction writers Bret Lott and Ron Hansen, and singer-songwriter Sam Phillips.

Click here for directions to 415 Westlake. Free parking is in the lot behind the building across the alley; enter at Ninth and Republican.