4:30 p.m. — Craft Talk, Standish Room (3rd Floor), Science Library
7:30 p.m. — Reading / Q&A, Recital Hall, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Stephanie Burt, influential trans poet and critic, was proclaimed “Poetry’s Cross-Dressing Kingmaker” by the New York Times in 2012. Her newest collection is We Are Mermaids (2022), an exploration in poetry of the non-binary nature and “in-betweenness” of human existence. Asked by blogger “Hey It’s Carly Rae” what she’d like readers to take away from the book, Burt said, “The ways in which queer and trans and weird people need other weird and trans and queer people in our lives. The ways we can make our own fun.” A professor at Harvard, Burt is also the author of a new guide to enjoying poetry, Don't Read Poetry (paperback, 2023). The New Yorker said the book, “evokes the contagious enthusiasm of a cool teacher.”
Cosponsored by the LGBTQ Advisory Council, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Office of Health Promotion, and the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project with major support from an ODI Diversity Transformation Grant.
