Advertisement
The Word by Word Creative Writing Series brings the acclaimed novelist and poet, Sandra Simonds, to UNF to deliver a public talk and reading to celebrate National Poetry Month!In this talk, "How a Book Takes Shape," Simonds will discuss how visual and linguistic patterns, forms, and shapes create the architecture of a book. She will explore the movement from writing individual poems to recognizing the emerging structure of a manuscript. Attention will also be given to ordering and pacing and how these choices guide the reader’s movement through a collection.
Simonds’ talk will be followed by a reading from her latest book, BURNING ORACLE (Wesleyan University Press), a Q&A, and a book signing.
This event is free and open to the public.
More about our guest:
Sandra Simonds, an award-winning writer and professor, is the author of ten books. Sandra has taught at Thomas University, Bennington College, Florida State University, and the University of Montana. Much of her writing focuses on capitalism, class, ecology, and gender through avant-garde experiments with genre and form. She is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Burning Oracle, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2026. She is also the author of Triptychs (Wave Books, November 2022) which was a 2022 New York Times selection. Her awards include the University of Akron Poetry Prize for Further Problems with Pleasure chosen by Carmen Giménez and the Cleveland State University Open Poetry Prize for Mother Was a Tragic Girl. She has been a finalist for numerous awards including the National Poetry Series. Her first novel, Assia (Noemi Press, 2023), based on the life of Assia Wevill, won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Fiction and was shortlisted for the Dzanc Fiction Prize.
Her poetry, criticism, and creative nonfiction have been published in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Granta, Boston Review, Ploughshares, and others. She was the recipient of the Reader’s Choice Award from the Academy of American Poets and is currently working on a book of experimental essays that are a hybrid of memoir, journalism, and literary criticism. Pieces from this manuscript are forthcoming in McSweeneys, Gulf Coast, the Seneca Review and elsewhere. Sandra has also been granted residencies at The Arctic Circle Residency, Millay Arts Colony, the Story Villa in Finland, Vermont Studio Center ,and Studio Faire in Southern France.
She earned a B.A. in Psychology and English at UCLA, an M.F.A. at the University of Montana, and her Ph.D. (with honors) in Creative Writing at Florida State University.
Advertisement
Event Venue
UNF Department of English, The Green, Jacksonville, FL 32224, United States, Jacksonville Beach
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
