The MFA Program in Creative Writing at Boise State University will present renowned poet Alice Notley at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3, in the Lookout Room of the Student Union Building.
Notley is considered one of the greatest living American poets, and is traveling to Boise State from Paris to take part in the MFA Program’s reading series. The reading is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7 p.m. No tickets are required.
Notley has published more than 25 books of poetry, including “Mysteries of Small Houses” (1998), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, “Disobedience” (2001), which was awarded the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and “Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005”, which received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Other honors and awards bestowed upon Notley include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She also has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry, “Certain Magical Acts,” was published by Penguin Books in 2016.
Born in Arizona and raised in Needles, California, Notley now resides in Paris. After earning her BA from Barnard College and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she moved about frequently in her youth, living in San Francisco, London, Essex, Chicago and elsewhere. She settled in New York’s Lower East Side in the 1970’s, and is often identified as one of the prominent members of the second generation of the New York School of poetry. Her poetry also exhibits an enduring fascination with the desert and its inhabitants. Notley writes in narrative and epic and genre-bending modes, and one theme she returns to frequently in her work is the social and cultural importance of disobedience.
The MFA Program in Creative Writing at Boise State University offers degree tracks in fiction and poetry, emphasizing the art and craft of literary writing and concentrating on the student’s written work. Two of the MFA’s publishing entities — The Idaho Review and Ahsahta Press — are widely regarded as leading national publications that consistently feature the top writers in the country.
The MFA in Creative Writing is a top research strength at Boise State. The program runs out of the Department of Theatre Arts, and each year brings distinguished writers to campus through its reading series and its Visiting Distinguished Writer professorship. Past Visiting Distinguished Writers include Joy Williams, Denis Johnson and Pierre Joris.