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October 4, 1999
Contact: Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189

Poets Kenneth Carroll and Donna Masini To Read Their Poems at the Library of Congress

On Thursday evening, October 21, poets Kenneth Carroll and Donna Masini will read from their work at the Library of Congress. The program, sponsored by the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, will be at 6:45 p.m. in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building. Tickets are not required.

Kenneth Carroll is a native of Washington, D.C., and is director of the Urban Scholars Program for the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C., managing the Books for Kids literacy project and WritersCorps, an arts and social service project. He is past president and current adviser for the African American Writers Guild and former President and Vice Chair for the African American Cultural Arts Center (8Rock). He is a freelance features writer and music reviewer; his work has appeared in The Washington Post, YSB Magazine, One Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, The Black Arts Bulletin, and Air Check. He has published poetry and plays in leading journals and anthologies, including Black Literature Forum, Catalyst, In Search of Color Everywhere, Fast Talk Full Volume, Spirit & Flame, Hungry As We Are, and Catch the Flame. His essays appear in the anthologies Tough Love: The Life of Tupac Shakur, Drum Voices and Ear to the Ground. His short stories appear in Children of the Dream: Growing Up with Racism and Shooting Star Magazine. His first book of poetry is So What: For the White Dude Who Said This Ain't Poetry (The Bunny & The Crocodile Press, 1996).

Mr. Carroll has served on many literary panels and has served as a literary consultant for the Smithsonian Institution, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the D.C. Public Schools, the D.C. Public Libraries, the Washington Performing Arts Society, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He lectures and performs frequently at universities and other venues as a member of the 8Rock Poetry Collective.

Donna Masini's book of poems, That Kind of Danger, won the Barnard Women Poets' Prize in 1994 and was published by Beacon Press. Her novel, About Yvonne, was published by W. W. Norton and Co. in 1998. She is at work on her next collection of poems, to be published by Norton. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and the a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, Ms. Masini has poems forthcoming in Triquarterly, and her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Georgia Review, Parnassus, and Boulevard. She is a professor in the M.F.A. program at Hunter College and teaches writing workshops at Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

Request ASL and ADA accommodations five days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Poetry and Literature Center, which administers the poetry series, is also the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed since 1936, when the late philanthropist Archer M. Huntington endowed the Chair of Poetry at the Library of Congress. Archibald MacLeish, who was Librarian from 1939 to 1944, determined the Consultant in Poetry should be an annual appointment. Since then, many of the nation's most eminent poets have served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the passage of Public Law 99-194 in 1985, as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

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PR 99-146
10/4/99
ISSN 0731-3527