An Evening with Poets

Wedensday, February 25, 2009 | 7pm

James Hoch and Sam Witt read from their recent books, Miscreants and Sunflower Brother, and other recent work.

Prior to teaching, James Hoch was a dishwasher, cook, dockworker, social worker and shepherd. His poems have appeared in Slate, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg, Ninth Letter, Carolina Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review and many others. They have been nominated many times for the Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Summer Literary Seminars, and received a 2007 NEA grant as well as a grant from the PA Council on the Arts. Miscreants will be published by WW Norton in June, 2007. A Parade of Hands won the Gerald Cable Award and was published in March 2003 by Silverfish Review Press. Originally from Collingswood, NJ, he resides in Mahwah, NJ with his wife and son. He has taught at Franklin and Marshall College and Lynchburg College. Currently, he teaches at Ramapo College of NJ.

Sam Witt’s first book of poetry, Everlasting Quail, won the Katherine Nason Bakeless First Book Prize in 2000, sponsored by Breadloaf.  Everlasting Quail was published by UPNE the following year, at which time Witt received a Fulbright Fellowship to live and write in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Witt has participated in poetry festivals at Druskininkai and Vilnius at the invitation of the Lithuanian government; he has been a resident at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and at Yaddo; his poems have been published in Virginia Quarterly, Harvard Review, Georgia Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Fence, New England Review, among other journals. His second book, Sunflower Brother, won the Cleveland State University Press Open Book competition for 2006; it is available from Cleveland State University Press.  Last year, Witt served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. He is currently looking for a publisher for his new manuscript, “Occupation: Dreamland” while freelancing and living in Charlottesville, Virginia.