Poet and essayist Lia Purpura to read at APSU on April 5

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – When reading Lia Purpura’s 2006 collection of essays, “On Looking,” a person can be excused for thinking they’d accidentally picked up a book of prose poetry. Purpura, an award-winning poet, infuses her non-fiction work with the same lyricism and aesthetics that go into her lines of verse.

“Lia Purpura has a jeweler’s eye, and the ear of someone who can distinguish the hoofbeats of a zebra,” writer and critic Luc Sante wrote. “Her essays are as sensual as a child’s first experiences of the world, but also as wise as the ability to remember those experiences.”

At 8 p.m. on April 5, Purpura will visit Austin Peay State University’s Morgan University Center, Room 303, for a reading of her prose and poetry and a book signing. The event is free and open to the public.

Purpura is a graduate of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a teaching/writing fellow in poetry. She is currently the writer-in-residence at Loyola College in Baltimore, Md. Sarabande Books will publish her most recent book of essays, “Rough Likeness,” in 2012. She is the author of numerous other works, including the essay collections “On Looking” and “Increase,” and several books of poetry, such as “King Baby,” “Stone Sky Lifting,” and “The Brighter the Veil.”

Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Agni Magazine, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review and Ploughshares.

For more information on Purpura or her reading, contact the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at 931-221-7876.

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Poet and essayist Lia Purpura to read at APSU on April 5

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