Visiting Writers Series: Sandra Beasley

We are honored to welcome poet, memoirist, editor Sandra Beasley as our fall speaker in the Visiting Writers Series on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2026.

Sandra Beasley is author of four poetry collections:

  • "Made to Explode," winner of the Housatonic Book Award.
  • "Count the Waves."
  • "I Was the Jukebox," winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize.
  • "Theories of Falling," winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. 

Honors for her work include a 2015 NEA Literature Fellowship, the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize, the John Montague International Poetry Fellowship and six DCCAH Artist Fellowships. She is also the author of the memoir "Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life" and the editor of "Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance." She lives in Washington, D.C. She serves as the poetry editor for Blair, a nonprofit press based in Durham, North Carolina.

Recommended Reading:

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WTY Alumni Auditorium

Ph.D. Job Placements

Since 1961, the Ph.D. program of the Department of English at the University of Kentucky has trained generations of distinguished scholars, teachers and professional graduates. Our graduates regularly go on to excellent academic jobs in research and teaching in a range of fields and institutions, both regionally and nationally. They also work in diverse para-academic and professional jobs in the public and private spheres.

Visiting Writers Series: Natasha Trethewey

 

Banner for the UKY Visiting Writers Series presenting Natasha Trethewey, September 23, 2026, 5:30 PM at the Singletary Center, 405 Rose St. Photo of Trethewey smiling, seated, wearing a black top and gray scarf. Sponsor logos on the right: UK College of Arts and Sciences, The Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies, and UK Gaines Center.

The Visiting Writers Series brings nationally and internationally recognized authors to campus for public readings and conversations that connect students and community members with contemporary literature and the creative process. This event is sponsored in part by The Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies and the Gaines Center for the Humanities.

Venue, parking and accessibility information for the Singletary Center can be found here.

About Natasha Trethewey

Woman in a black dress with grey scarf sitting in chair smiling at camera

Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry:

  • Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award.
  • Thrall (2012).
  • Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
  • Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002).
  • Domestic Work (2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the first Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. 

In addition to her poetry, Trethewey is the author of two memoirs: The House of Being (2024) and Memorial Drive (2020). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. 

She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. 

At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Date:
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Singletary Center for the Arts
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Ekphrastic poetry course publishes anthology “Provokable” inspired by artworks in UK Art Museum

By Francis Von Mann 

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Apr. 9, 2026) - Students from Erik Reece's Ekphrastic Poetry course at the University of Kentucky's MFA Creative Writing program have self-published a collection of poems titled "Provokable: Writing Inspired by the University of Kentucky Art Museum." 

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