Poetry Reading
The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing is proud to feature poets Jeredith Merrin, Rose Solari, and Valerie Bandura for a reading and signing.
Rose Solari is the author of three full-length collections of poems, "The Last Girl," "Orpheus in the Park," and "Difficult Weather," as well as the multi-media play "Looking for Guenevere," an Arthurian retelling. "A Secret Woman" is her first novel. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including the University of Maryland, St. John’s College, Annapolis, the Jung Society of Washington, and The Centre for Creative Writing, Kellogg College, Oxford, England. Her work as a journalist includes positions as staff writer and editor for "Common Boundary Magazine" and for "SportsFan Magazine," the latter of which she also helped to found. Her awards include the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, The Columbia Book Award, and an EMMA award for Excellence in journalism. She currently serves on the Advisory Panel of the Centre for Creative Writing, Kellogg College, Oxford, England. She is at work on a critical study of 20th century British and American poetry as well as a new novel.
Jeredith Merrin — brought up in the Pacific Northwest — took her master's in English (specializing in Chaucer), and a doctorate from UC Berkeley in Anglo-American Poetry and Poetics. "Cup," a special honoree in the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, is her third collection; her previous books are "Shift" and "Bat Ode" (University of Chicago Press Phoenix Poets series). She’s authored an influential book of criticism on Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. Her reviews and essays (on Moore, Bishop, Clare, Mew, Amichai, and others), and poems have appeared in Paris Review, Slate, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, Yale Review and elsewhere. A retired professor of English (The Ohio State University), she lives near Phoenix.
Valerie Bandura’s collection of poems, "FREAK SHOW" (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), is a 2014 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. Her poems have appeared, among other publications, in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, Alaska Quarterly, Third Coast, and the Best New Poets anthology. Born in the former Soviet Union, Bandura received degrees from Columbia University and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she served as the Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow. She was awarded a residency from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and the James Merrill Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches writing at Arizona State University.