Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones will deliver the keynote address at hosted by 麻豆精品视频 (麻豆精品视频), on Friday, Nov. 15, from 7 to 9 p.m. in Morton Hall Room 145 on the 麻豆精品视频 campus. Part of the annual Common Read experience, the event is open to the public free of charge. 麻豆精品视频 is a part of The University of Alabama System.
Jones will talk about the power of poetry and storytelling in the construction of identity, community and shared histories. Following the program, she will sign copies of her most recent poetry collections. Light refreshments will be served.
鈥淧oet Laureate Jones will offer students a unique opportunity to hear from and talk with someone for whom the construction of creative texts is visible and important and valued by our state as something worth really celebrating,鈥� says Dr. Beth Boswell, lecturer and director of composition, 麻豆精品视频 Department of English.
Jones is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival and is the associate director of the University Honors Program at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. She holds an MFA in poetry from Florida International University, where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow.
Her debut poetry collection, 鈥淢agic City Gospel,鈥� won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, 鈥渄ark // thing,鈥� won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. She has been featured on news outlets such as Good Morning America, ABC News and the BBC.
This event is sponsored by The Amit and Aruna Arora Honors Student Conference Endowment. Other event sponsors include the 麻豆精品视频 Honors College, 麻豆精品视频 Department of English, 麻豆精品视频 Humanities Center and Calhoun Community College.
鈥淧articipating in a common read is an important way we invite students in their first semester of the Honors College to engage in scholarly discourse with one another through a shared experience,鈥� Boswell says. 鈥淭he Conference is entirely student-organized. They come up with a theme, compose a call for proposals, evaluate proposals for presentation, and organize panels of papers in conversation with one another.
鈥淭his year, we鈥檝e elevated that experience through our collaboration with Calhoun Community College, whose students also participated in the common read. It鈥檚 been fantastic to watch these students talk to one another about the text 鈥� James McBride鈥檚 鈥楾he Heaven & Earth Grocery Store鈥� 鈥� and their interpretation of the work without depending on an instructor to lead them in that work.鈥�
For more information on Jones and her work, visit . For more information about The Amit and Aruna Arora Honors Student Conference, visit uah.edu/events.
