Department of English

• Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Kelly Writers House

Herman Beavers is Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching African American Literature and Creative Writing since 1989. His poems have appeared in Whiskey Island, Cross Connect, Black American  Literature Forum (presently titled The African American Review), Dark Phrases, The Cincinnati Poetry Review, Peregrine, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Callaloo, MELUS, The Langston Hughes Colloquy, Versadelphia, Cleaver Magazine, and American Arts Quarterly,  as well as the anthology, Gathering Ground: A Cave Canem Reader. His chapbook, A Neighborhood of Feeling won first prize in the Doris Press Chapbook competition. He was among the first group of Cave Canem Fellows when the group was established in 1996. Since  then, he has given readings in and around the Philadelphia area, including readings with Yusef Komunyakaa, Elizabeth Alexander, June Jordan, and Major Jackson and been featured on Live at the Kelly Writers House (o!
 n Penn’s radio station, WXPN). His poems have  been nominated for The Best American Poetry series, The Best of the Web, and nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize in Poetry. He has been a finalist for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award, the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize, and the Lena Miles Wever Poetry  Prize. Dr. Beavers has recently completed work on a chapbook of poems, The Vernell Poems and a full length poetry manuscript, Even in Such Light. His chapbook, Obsidian Blues is forthcoming from Agape Editions as part of its Morning House Chapbook Series.  He is now at work on a volume of poems that feature characters from Toni Morrison’s Beloved. He lives in Burlington Township, NJ with his wife, Lisa, and their two children, Michael and Corinne.

William J. Harris lives and writers in Brooklyn, New York. He is both professor emeritus and former director of the Creative Writing Program (2010-2014) at the University of Kansas. Among his books are Crooners, In My Own Dark Way, Hey Fella Would You Mind  Holding This Piano a Moment, and The Poetry and Poetics of Amir Baraka; he has published poems in more than 50 anthologies, including the classic, The Poetry of Black America, the innovative Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone and the recent Supplement. His work has  also appeared in numerous journals, such as Lute & Drum, Artforum, Catamaran, Callaloo, and American Scholar. Presently, Harris is writing four chapbooks: “Sappho,” poems written after the ancient poet, “Catullus,” poems written after the first century Latin  poet, “Brave New World,” a chapbook of science fiction poems, and “Lucifer,” a small book about that fellow.