Briggs-Copeland reading features poets Klink and Richards

Tonight (Feb. 19) at 7, Houghton Library hosts Harvard’s first Briggs-Copeland Poetry Reading. The event, held in the Edison and Newman Room, will feature readings by Joanna Klink and Peter Richards, two of Harvard’s six Briggs-Copeland Lecturers. Bret Anthony Johnston, director of the creative writing program in the Department of English, will provide an introduction.

Briggs-Copeland Lectureships are five-year teaching positions reserved for published writers in a variety of genres. All Briggs-Copeland lecturers teach seminar courses in the creative writing program. Each seminar is workshop-based and concentrates on a single genre, such as playwriting, fiction, or poetry. The Briggs-Copeland Readings are designed to give the lecturers an opportunity to share their work and discuss the creative writing process with the Harvard community.

Klink is the author of “Circadian” (Penguin, 2007) and “They Are Sleeping” (University of Georgia, 2000). Her work has been published in Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, and Denver Quarterly. She received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award in 2003.

Richards is the author of “Nude Siren” (Verse Press/Zephyr Press, 2002) and “Oubliette” (Verse Press, 2001). He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. Richards currently teaches two poetry workshops in the creative writing program.

The Briggs-Copeland Poetry Reading is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact Christina Davis at (617) 495-2454. The event is co-sponsored by the Woodberry Poetry Room and the Department of English.