Distinguished Writers Series: Carolyn Forché and Valzhyna Mort April 20, 2010

Carolyn Forché is known as a “poet of witness.” Her four collections include The Country Between Us, which received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and The Angel of History, which was chosen for The Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her most recent collection is Blue Hour. Forché is the Lannan Visiting Professor of Poetry and Professor of English at Georgetown University in Maryland. In the words of the Irish Times, Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort is a “risen star of the international poetry world.” Born in the city of Minsk in 1981, Mort made her American debut with the collection Factory of Tears, co-translated by the husband-and-wife team of Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright. Her honors include the Hubert Burda Award for Eastern European Poetry. Presented by the Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College.