News & Events

UNC Asheville to Host Reading by North Carolina Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers

October 12, 2010

UNC Asheville's Creative Writing Program will host an evening with North Carolina Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 2, in UNC Asheville's Humanities Lecture Hall. Smith Bowers will read and discuss her poems. A reception and book signing will follow. Smith Bowers is the author of four collections of poetry, including her most recent work, "The Candle I Hold Up To See You." The event is free and open to the public.

Smith Bowers was appointed North Carolina Poet Laureate by Gov. Bev Perdue to serve as an ambassador of North Carolina literature, past and present. She is a winner of the General Electric Award for Younger Writers, recipient of a South Carolina Poetry Fellowship and winner of the South Carolina Arts Commission Fiction Project. Her other collections of poetry include "The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas," "Traveling in Time of Danger" and "A Book of Minutes." Her poems have also appeared widely in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review.

Smith Bowers teaches at UNC Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program, Wofford College, and the Queens University of Charlotte low-residency MFA program, where she served for many years as poet-in-residence and received the 2002 J.B. Fuqua Distinguished Educator Award. Smith Bowers holds a master's degree from Winthrop University.

The event is cosponsored by UNC Asheville's Department of Literature and Language and the Literature Club. For more information, call UNC Asheville's Literature and Language Department at 828.251.6411, or visit www.unca.edu/lit.