Wenatchee Valley College Hosting Earth Day Poetry Reading

Wenatchee Valley College is honoring Earth Day and National Poetry Month with a poetry reading next week. 

Visiting author and Texas Tech University professor Kurt Caswell will read his poetry and select from WVC entries to read their work alongside him. 

WVC English Professor Derek Sheffield says Caswell will have his hands full in the selection process.  

"We had 67 entries from both campuses," said Sheffield. "So, he's got a little bit of work to do, some reading." 

The poetry reading will take place next Thursday evening at the WVC Grove Recital Hall. 

Caswell is appearing as part of the Wenatchee Valley College Visiting Writers Series. 

Sheffield says the public will also have a chance to meet Caswell at Jacobson Preserve in Wenatchee earlier that day. 

"We're going to go on a walk and talk with the visiting writer Kurt Caswell, and anyone else who wants to join us," Sheffield said. "I'll be there as well. And I think some students will be joining us." 

Both the poetry reading and the walk, and talk are part of the annual Earth Week the college holds every year leading up to Earth Day.  WVC also has an elaborate sustainability program.

Earth Day itself takes place on Monday, April 22. 

The poetry reading is from 7-8 p.m. in The Grove Recital Hall, Music and Art Center, on the Wenatchee campus. 

The walk and talk at Jacobson Preserve is from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Participants will meet at the preserve’s parking lot near the Wenatchee Racquet and Athletic Club on Skyline Drive.   

This Visiting Writers Series event is sponsored by the WVC English Department, the WVC Sustainability Committee, the Icicle Creek Center for the Arts, and A Book for All Seasons. 

Below is a rundown of Caswell’s nonfiction work: 

• Laika's Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog  
• Getting to Grey Owl: Journeys on Four Continents  
• In the Sun’s House: My Year Teaching on the Navajo Reservation An Inside Passage, winner of the 2008 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize.  

Caswell is co-editor of “Going to See: 30 Writers on Nature, Inspiration, and the World of Barry Lopez,” which will debut in May of this year.  

His essays have appeared in ISLE, Isotope, Matter, Ninth Letter, Orion, River Teeth, and the American Literary Review.