Friday, October 13, 2017

Jason Shinder Theater Dedication Reading
Downtown Writer's Center
Featuring Poet Marie Howe

Price: Free
YMCA Downtown
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

In 1981, poet Jason Shinder founded the first YMCA Writers Voice center at the Westside YMCA in New York City, then turned the idea of a YMCA- based literary arts program into a national effort, the YMCA National Writers Voice, in the 1990s. He was also the author of two tremendous collections of poems, Among Women and Stupid Hope, both published by Graywolf. Jason died in 2008, after battling lymphoma and leukemia for several years. When we were starting programs here at the DWC, we benefitted greatly from Jason's passion and expertise. We're honored to recognize Jason Shinder's work at the new venue for our visiting author reading series. To mark the occasion, we will be joined by acclaimed poet Marie Howe, one of Jason's dearest friends, who will read from Jason's poetry, as well as her own.

Marie Howe is the author of four volumes of poetry: Magdalene: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2017); The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2009); What the Living Do (1997); and The Good Thief (1988). She is also the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review , among others. Her many awards and honors include a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets, and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. In 2015 she received the Poetry Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. From 2012-2014, Howe served as the Poet Laureate of New York State.