Allegheny Single Voice Reading Series Features Poet Jane Hirshfield

Poet and prose writer Jane Hirshfield will visit the campus of Allegheny College for two events on Thursday, March 9.  She will speak and answer questions on the subject of “Poetry and Mindfulness” at 12:30 p.m. in Odd Fellows 105C, and at 7 p.m. she will read from her work as part of Allegheny College’s Single Voice Reading Series in Ford Memorial Chapel. Both events are free and open to the public.

Jane Hirshfield attended Princeton University, where she was among the university’s first graduating class to include women. She has taught at the the University of California, Berkeley, Duke University, University of San Francisco, and Stanford University. In 2012, Hirshfield was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Her work has received extensive accolades. Her collections “Of Gravity & Angels” won the California Book Award in Poetry, “The October Palace” won the Poetry Center Book Award, and her essay “Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World” was awarded the Northern California Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. For “The Lives of the Heart,” she won the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, and “Given Sugar, Given Salt” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award.
Hirshfield’s visit is part of Allegheny’s ongoing Year of Mindfulness, a series of events and a challenge to the campus community to live this year with mindfulness and intention. For more information, visit www.allegheny.edu/yearofmindfulness.
The Single Voice Reading Series will continue with appearances by Allegheny alumnus James Davis May and author Chelsea Rathburn on April 6. For more information about the Single Voice Reading Series, contact Frederick F. Seely Professor of English Christopher Bakken at cbakken@allegheny.edu.