Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling ByerNEWS: Kathryn Byer’s got a brand new blog! In “My Laureate’s Lasso” she invites you to read her thoughts on the passing literary scene and to join her in conversation by posting your own views and responses.Photo by Chris English, UNCG Gov. Michael F. Easley appointed Kathryn Stripling Byer, of Cullowhee, to be North Carolina's poet laureate on February 24, 2005. As poet laureate, Ms. Byer serves as an ambassador of North Carolina literature, past and present. She succeeded Fred Chappell. Ms. Byer participates in public events, curates features on poetry and other aspects of North Carolina literature for the North Carolina Arts Council's web site, and hopes to organize creative writing workshops for North Carolina schools using the state's distance-learning facilities. She also writes poems commemorating occasions of historic or cultural importance. Ms. Byer is serving a two-year term, renewable at the governor's discretion. Subsidies for Ms. Byer's public activities (readings, workshops, and so forth) are available to nonprofit organizations through the North Carolina Arts Council. For information, send an e-mail message to Jeff Pettus at jeff.pettus@ncdcr.gov. Click here for print and audio versions of Ms. Byer's poem, "Her Daughter," which appears in the November, 2005, issue of The Atlantic. |