Poets Michael Sowder and Maria Melndez will read from their work at the Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch at 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, March 21st as part of the City Art Reading Series. Maria Melendez has published two collections of poetry: Base Pairs (Swan Scythe Press, 2001) and How Long She'll Last in This World (University of Arizona Press, 2006). Her essays and features have appeared in alternative print venues such as Altar Magazine, Orion Afield, and Isotope, and several of her essays on arts and activism have been broadcast as part of NPR's American Democracy Project. She currently serves as Associate Editor for Momotombo Press, an independent publisher producing works by emerging Latino writers, and she co-coordinates Poetas y Pintores: Artists Conversing with Verse, a traveling exhibition of contemporary Latino art and poetry. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in such magazines as Barrow Street, International Quarterly, and Ecological Restoration, and she is currently at work on a third collection of poetry. She received her M.A. in English/Creative Writing from UC Davis in 2000. From 2000-2003 she was awarded grants from the California Arts Council in support of her work as writer-in-residence at the U.C. Davis Arboretum, where she taught environmental writing workshops for the public. In 2003, Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, appointed her Research Fellow at the Center for Women's InterCultural Leadership. She currently lives in Logan, Utah, where she teaches creative writing and literature courses at Utah State University. Michael SowderÂs most recent book of poetry, The Empty Boat, was chosen by Diane Wakoski to win the 2004 T. S. Eliot Prize. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, the book was a finalist for the Utah Book Award, and poems from it were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. The Emtpy Boat is available from Truman State UP and Amazon. Click here for Diane Wakoski's comments. Sowder's study of Walt Whitman's poetry, Whitman's Ecstatic Union: Conversion and Ideology in Leaves of Grass (NY: Routledge, 2005), examines Leaves of Grass within the context of the antebellum culture of religious conversion prevalent in nineteenth-century America, reading the ecstatic experience of conversion as an event that could produce both believers and heretics. In this context, Whitman's Ecstatic Union interprets Leaves of Grass as a rhetorical, sermonic performance designed to convert readers into Whitman's ideal of a "New American Personality." He is a professor of English at Utah State University. The event is free and open to the public. City Art is sponsored by the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Zoo, Arts, and Parks, X-mission, and audience donations. The featured reading will be followed by an open reading. ____________________________________________________________________________________ It's here! Your new message! Get new email alerts with the free Yahoo! Toolbar. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/