SCC to host author Vivian Shipley next Tuesday | Arts & Culture

COLUMBUS COUNTY, NC (WECT) – Author Vivian Shipley will read from her published books of poetry as part of Southeastern Community College’s Visiting Author/Clemmons Lecture Series on April 17 at 1 p.m.

Admission to the event, which will be held in the College’s Auditorium, is free of charge. A reception and book signing will follow in the lobby of A-Building.

Shipley, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize five times, has published eight celebrated books of poetry. Her latest book won the 2011 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and CT Press Club Prize for Best Creative Writing among many others.

Her awards also include the Library of Congress’s Connecticut Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Literary Community and the Connecticut Book Award for Poetry from the Center for the Book. Raised in Kentucky, with a Ph.D. from Vanderbuilt, she was inducted into the University of Kentucky Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2010. Shipley teaches poetry at Southern Connecticut State University.

“Vivian Shipley is, among her many distinctions, one of America’s truly eminent poets of family,” wrote Sydney Lea, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Guggenheim Fellow. “…unlike so many of her rootless contemporaries, she comes from identifiable (and complex and ultimately lovable) ‘people,’ as they say in the South…”

For more information about Shipley’s performance at SCC, contact Patricia Bjorklund at (910) 642-7141, ext. 299 or pbjorklund@sccnc.edu.