Authors to give public readings during the 2012 Writers Series hosted by SBU’s Department of English

Several distinguished writers will make separate appearances at St. Bonaventure University this semester as part of the 2012 Writers Series, sponsored by St. Bonaventure’s Department of English and the School of Arts and Sciences.

 Each will give readings on campus, which will be open to the public at no charge. The authors and their scheduled readings include:

•             5 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, Walsh Science Center amphitheater: poet, editor and ecocritic Jonathan Skinner

•             7 p.m. Wednesday, April 11, Garret Theater: poet, short-story writer and critic Peter Makuck

•             Thursday, April 19, 5:10 p.m., Dresser Auditorium, Murphy Professional Building: poet, editor, essayist and teacher Gregory Betts

 In addition, a relatively new writer on the literary landscape, Devin Murphy, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from St. Bonaventure in 2002, will return to campus to visit creative writing classes and give a reading. Details of his visit will be announced at a later date.

 Other guests and activities, including a visit by a slam poet, will be announced as plans are developed, said Dr. Patrick Panzarella, English chair at St. Bonaventure.

 Jonathan Skinner’s poetry collections include “Birds of Tifft” (BlazeVOX, 2011) and “Political Cactus Poems” (Palm Press, 2005). He founded and edits the journal ecopoetics (www.ecopoetics.org), which features creative-critical intersections between writing and ecology.

 Skinner also writes ecocriticism on contemporary poetry and poetics. He has published essays on the poets Charles Olson, Ronald Johnson, Lorine Niedecker, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Bernadette Mayer, and on horizontal concepts such as the Third Landscape. He is writing a book of investigative poems on the urban landscapes of Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture.

 Skinner earned his Ph.D. in English (poetics) at the State University of New York at Buffalo and is a former assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College in Maine. He is a 2011-2012 Fellow with the Cornell Society for Humanities.