2:55 p.m., April 9, 2007--UD's English department presents “A Celebration of Reading and Writing,” on Wednesday, April 11, Wednesday, April 18, and Thursday, April 19. All events are free and open to the public.

Author Kathrine Varnes, who received her doctorate in English from UD in 1997, will read selections from her work and will announce the winners of the Academy of American Poets Award, the Elda Wollaeger Gregory Poetry Prize, the Thomas W. Molyneux Prose Award and the Art Award at 5 p.m., Wednesday, April 11, in 127 Memorial Hall. The winning work will appear in Caesura, UD's literary magazine.

"Many students submit work to Caesura and wait eagerly to hear whether they've been included and/or won prizes," Jeanne Murray Walker, professor of English, said. "We are particularly proud this year to host a celebrated writer at the event from our own ranks."

Varnes' essays on contemporary poetry and feminism have appeared in various journals and collections, including Connotations, After New Formalism and Per Contra. She is co-editor of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of their Art and author of The Paragon, a book of poems. Her play, Listen, will be produced this summer in Columbia, Mo.

Playwright Arthur Giron will read selections from his plays as part of the Marion Neide Green Reading Series at 5 p.m., Wednesday, April 18, in 127 Memorial Hall.

Giron's play Edith Stein was described by The New York Times as being “filled with passionate ideas.” Produced in 60 cities, his play Becoming Memories was awarded the Los Angeles Critics-Drama Logue Prize for “outstanding achievement in playwriting” and is a popular learning play at educational institutions, including Cornell University and William and Mary.

Giron was the head of the graduate playwriting program at Carnegie Mellon University and was the founding member of The Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York. His current work includes The Golden Guitar, a bilingual opera commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and Flight, a play about the Wright brothers when they were children, which recently completed a national tour of 120 cities.

Giron also will announce the three winners of the 10th annual University of Delaware One-Act Script Competition at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 19, at Liberman's Bookstore in the Galleria on Main Street, Newark. E-52, UD's student-run theatre group, will perform the winning scripts.

For more information, call (302) 831-2361.