Upcoming Events
The Appalachian Reading Series Presents Erin Keane
April 11, 2012 - Harrogate, Tennessee – Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) will continue its 2011-2012 Appalachian Reading Series and associated mini-residency with visiting author Erin Keane. As part of her three-day visit, Keane will offer a poetry writing workshop that is free and open to the public on Sunday, April 15, 1-4 p.m. in Room 105 of the LMU Debusk School of Osteopathic Medicine. On Tuesday, April 17, Keane will give a public reading at 7 p.m. in the Murray Alumni Lounge of Carnegie Vincent Library on the LMU campus. During her visit, Keane will also visit selected local public school classrooms. Erin Keane’s mini-residency is funded in part by South Arts with help from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Erin Keane is the author of two collections of poetry, Death-Defying Acts (WordFarm, 2010) and The Gravity Soundtrack, (WordFarm, 2007). Her chapbook, The One-Hit Wonders, is a small collection of poems about rock and roll. Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as Salon, The Courier-Journal, LEO, Sou'wester, The Louisville Review, Redivider, PANK, The Lumberyard, Nimrod, Phoebe, Now & Then and Louisville Magazine.
Keane earned her MFA in creative writing at Spalding University. A recipient of a fellowship from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, she serves on the editorial boards of Strange Horizons and The Heartland Review and teaches in the MFA program at National University.
“I have strong ties to Louisville because I’ve lived here for 13 years, but I never really felt tied to Kentucky itself as a place the way so many Kentucky writers do,” says soft-spoken but spirited poet Erin Keane. Instead, her appeal broadens beyond the Bluegrass; her themes are relevant in a more temporal rather than spatial way. “The pop culture is really what binds all suburban kids at some point,” she says. “It’s cable television; it’s MTV, alternative music, all that stuff. It depends on when you grew up, not where you grew up.”
Darnell Arnoult, writer in residence at LMU and director of the Appalachian Reading Series says of Keane, “I love Erin’s energy and how her energy flows into her vivid and evocative poetry. She can make a poem about a chemistry test sing. And while Erin’s work is grounded in very important ways, it will be good for our community’s aspiring poets to spend time with a poet whose work is not so overtly connected to place. Erin’s poetry is a mirror held up to time and pop culture and in large part defies regional context while remaining honest to experience.”
Admission to both the workshop and the reading is free, and the public is encouraged to attend. Registration will take place at the door of the workshop and will continue until the class is full. Keane’s books will be on sale at the reading. For more information, email Darnell Arnoult at darnell.arnoult@LMUnet.edu or call 423.869.7074.
