Former NYS Poet Laureate Keynotes Poetry Festival April 9 in Dobbs Ferry

Marie Howe, former Poet Laureate for New York State, will deliver the keynote reading during the sixth annual Westchester Poetry Festival, Saturday, April 9, 2016, 1:00 PM-5:00 PM, in the historic Estherwood Mansion on The Masters School campus, Dobbs Ferry, NY. The Festival, jointly sponsored by The Hudson Valley Writers' Center (www.writerscenter.org) and The Masters School (www.mastersny.org), also will feature six acclaimed poets, including Deborah Landau, who was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship this past week.

The Poetry Festival will open and close with student readings. For more information about the Poetry Festival, please contact Judy Murphy, Masters School Librarian, at judy.murphy@mastersny.org or 914-479-6419 or Jennifer Franklin, Program Director at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, at jennifer@writerscenter.org or 914-332-5953. Admission and parking are free.

"The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center is thrilled to co-sponsor the Westchester Poetry Festival again,” said Jewel Kinch-Thomas, the Center’s Executive Director. “Since 2010 the Westchester Poetry Festival has exposed our friends and neighbors, throughout Westchester, to some of the best poets in the world.” “Each Festival is special,” adds Chris Goulian, Academic Dean at The Masters School and founder of the Westchester Poetry Festival, “but this year’s promises to be particularly exciting. We are especially honored to have Marie Howe join us as our keynote poet, adding her unique voice to the rich ensemble of poets and students who will be reading at this year’s Festival.”

Howe, a Sarah Lawrence College professor, was New York State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014 and is the author of three volumes of poetry: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (Norton, 1999); What the Living Do (Norton, 2009); and National Poetry Series Winner, The Good Thief (Persea, 1988). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Review, The Atlantic, and Poetry, among other publications. Howe is the recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship as well as fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Joining Howe are: Susana H. Case, author of four chapbooks and four books of poetry, including 4 Rms w Vu (Mayapple Press, 2014); Alex Dimitrov (Begging for It, Four Way Books, 2013), recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize for younger poets from The American Poetry Review and author of a forthcoming collection by Cooper Canyon Press in 2017; Deborah Landau, author of three poetry collections, including The Uses of the Body (2011) and The Last Usable Hour (2015), both Lannan Literary Selections from Copper Canyon Press; Maya Pindyck, author of the poetry collections Friend Among Stones (New Rivers Press, 2009) and Emoticoncert (Four Way Books, 2016); Iain Haley Pollock, English teacher at Rye Country Day School and author of Spit Back a Boy (University of Georgia Press, 2011); Mervyn Taylor, the Trinidadian-born author of five books of poetry, including No Back Door (Shearsman Books 2010), which received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, and The Waving Gallery (Shearsman Books 2014).

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The Masters School (www.mastersny.org) is a premier coed day and boarding school that engages 5th – 12th grade students with a challenging curriculum in a welcoming learning environment. Masters is situated on 96 picturesque acres, where both day and boarding students benefit from the resources, diversity and activities of Masters' seven-day campus and accessible faculty. From its exceptional academics, outstanding visual and performing arts, to championship athletic teams, the Masters learning experience prepares students for success in college, career and life.

The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center (www.writerscenter.org), housed in the restored historic Philipse Manor Railroad Station, presents a wide range of literary experiences through public readings by established and emerging writers, a variety of writing workshops in many genres, and publishes new poetry under the imprint of Slapering Hol Press.