Prizewinning poets Joy Priest and Ashley Blooms, English professor and author Mark Brazaitis, and two members of the Appalachian Prison Book Project, will read their work as part of the 2025 West Virginia Writers’ Workshop at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (July 17) in 130 Colson Hall, Room 130.
Priest, the 2020 recipient of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, is the author of “Horsepower,” Pitt Poetry Series, 2020, and the editor of “Once a City Said: A Louisville Poetry Anthology,” Sarabande, 2023.
Blooms is the author of “Where I Can’t Follow” and “Every Bone a Prayer.” Her work has been nominated for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, Weatherford Award and Judy Gaines Young Book Award. The author has also been named a South Arts State Literary Fellow for Kentucky.
Brazaitis is the author of three novels, a book of poems and five collections of short stories. “The Incurables” is the winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose and “The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala” is the winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award.
Katy Ryan, a professor in the Department of English, and graduate student Destinee Harper will read from “This Book is Free and Yours to Keep,” a collection of letters and artwork by people in prison that highlights the crucial work done by the Appalachian Prison Book Project. The nonprofit provides books to incarcerated people in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Maryland.
Book signings will follow the readings.
For questions, contact Mark Brazaitis at 304-276-8846 or Mark.Brazaitis@mail.wvu.edu.