Award-winning Poet Naomi Shihab Nye to visit St. Edward’s University

AUSTIN — Award-Winning Poet Naomi Shihab Nye will read from her work at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 14 on the St. Edward’s University campus. This event is part of the School of Humanities Visiting Writers Series and is also in support of the university’s common theme for this academic year: The Many Faces of Islam.

Nye is the daughter of a Palestinian father and an American mother and has lived in Ramallah, the Old City in Jerusalem, St. Louis, and San Antonio, which is her current home. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including her 2005 collection, You and Yours.

Nye has received several awards and has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the U.S. Information Agency promoting international goodwill through the arts. She is also the Texas Observer’s poetry editor.

Her recent books include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, a National Book Award finalist in 2002; Going Going; A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Come with Me: Poems for a Journey; Fuel; Red Suitcase and Habibi, a novel for young readers, which won six Best Book awards.

In addition, she has edited seven anthologies of poetry for young readers, including This Same Sky; The Tree is Older than You Are; The Space Between our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East; What Have You Lost? and Salting the Ocean.

The Visiting Writers Series is a St. Edward’s initiative to share well-known and respected writers with the St. Edward’s faculty and staff members, students and the Austin community. Each semester, the School of Humanities invites one or more well-known writers to campus. Each writer spends one to two days on campus visiting writing classes, speaking at open sessions for the campus and Austin community, and giving a public reading from their works.

For more information about Naomi Shihab Nye, visit www.barclayagency.com/nye.html

Breakout Box:

WHO: Award-Winning Poet, Essayist and Novelist Naomi Shihab Nye
WHAT: A Reading
WHEN: Tuesday, Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Mabee Ballrooms A & B, Robert and Pearle Ragsdale Center, St. Edward’s University

Founded by the Congregation of Holy Cross, St. Edward's University has been named as one of America's Best Colleges for 2006 by U.S. News & World Report and was selected by The Princeton Review for inclusion in the guide Colleges with a Conscience. St. Edward's is a private, Catholic, liberal arts university of more than 4,900 students located in Austin, Texas.

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