Alison Pelegrin
Lee University will continue the 2018-19 Writer’s Festival with a reading by poet Alison Pelegrin on Thursday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m. in the Rose Lecture Hall, located in Lee’s Helen DeVos College of Education.
Ms. Pelegrin has written several poetry collections, including the 2018 Diode Chapbook Prize winner, “Our Lady of the Flood,” and the 2006 Akron Poetry Prize winner, “Big Muddy River of Stars.”
“Through poetry, Alison Pelegrin interrogates the South and its complex history,” said Dr. William Woolfitt, associate professor of creative writing at Lee. “In bayous and hurricanes, ditches and flood debris, she finds joy, hope, and glimpses of God. We are so glad that she is coming to Cleveland.”
Ms. Pelegrin’s poems have also been published in Poetry, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, and Barn Owl Review. She has received fellowships from The Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Alison Pelegrin is one of the sharpest wits to come out of the Bayou State in a long time,” said poet Martha Serpas. “She can conjure Louisiana’s present-tense, unapologetic, tragicomic drama with authenticity.”
Ms. Pelegrin currently teaches English at Southeastern Louisiana University. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas, where she directed the Arkansas Writers in the Schools Program for two years.
In addition to the public reading, Ms. Pelegrin will also lead workshops for high school students interested in creative writing.
Her reading at the Writer’s Festival will be free and open to the public.
This event is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission.
For more information about the Writer’s Festival, contact Dr. Woolfitt at wwoolfitt@leeuniversity.edu.