BOONE—Poet Ed Madden opens the spring Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series Thursday, March 3, at Appalachian State University. He will give a craft talk, “Public Voice, Public Work,” at 2 p.m. in Plemmons Student Union’s Table Rock Room. The talk will address public voice and the particular issues/opportunities/challenges Madden has faced as a poet laureate, including ways the position has made him think about audience, craft and voice.

His reading will begin at 7: 30 p.m., also in Table Rock Room. Book sales and signing will follow the reading.

“Ed Madden is such a terrific, multi-faceted writer. As a gay man, he writes and publishes poems that sometimes take up his sexuality and sometimes don’t,” said English professor and poet Kathryn Kirkpatrick from Appalachian’s Department of English. “As a poet-scholar, he flourishes in a hybrid career, one pollinating the other; and as a city poet-laureate, he writes wonderfully fearless public poems, often about race, from a Deep South background in a very southern state.”

Born and raised in rural Arkansas, Madden is a professor of English and director of women’s and gender studies at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of four books of poetry: “Signals,” which won the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, “Prodigal: Variations,” “Nest” and most recently “Ark.” His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, Poetry Ireland Review, as well as in “Best New Poets 2007,” “The Book of Irish American Poetry” and “Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry” and online at the Good Men Project.

Madden received the inaugural Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship from the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Also a scholar of Irish literature and culture, he was a 2010 research fellow at the Centre for Irish Studies at the National University of Ireland in Galway. In 2015 he was named the poet laureate for the City of Columbia, South Carolina.

The next speaker in the series will be Dannye Romine Powell March 31.

About the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series

The visiting writers series is named in honor of Hughlene Bostian Frank (class of 1968). Frank is a member of the Appalachian State University Foundation Board, a 2013 Appalachian Alumni Association Outstanding Service award recipient, past member of Appalachian’s Board of Trustees and generous supporter of the university.

The 2015-16 Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series is supported by the Appalachian State University Foundation, Appalachian’s Office of Academic Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Office of Multicultural Student Development, the university’s Common Reading Program, the University Bookstore, Belk Library and Information Commons and the Appalachian Journal.

Business sponsors are The Gideon Ridge Inn, the New Public House & Hotel and The Red Onion Restaurant. Community sponsors include John and the late Margie Idol, Paul and Judy Tobin, Alice Naylor and Thomas McLaughlin.

Parking is free on campus after 5 p.m. The Library Parking Deck on College Street, which opens to the general public after 5:30 p.m., is recommended. To reach Plemmons Student Union, cross College Street and follow the walkway between the chiller plant and the University Bookstore, passing the University Post Office and entering Plemmons Student Union on the second floor. For further parking information or a map, see http://parking.appstate.edu or call the Parking and Traffic Office 828- 262-2878.

For further information on the spring season, call 828-262-2871 or see http://visitingwriters.appstate.edu. To receive Appalachian’s “This Week in the Arts” announcements by email, contact [email protected].

About Appalachian State University

As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, affordable education for all. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at https://www.appstate.edu.

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