May 11, 6-8:30 p.m.
Conservatory Plaza
Kickoff this series of readings by esteemed poets, authors and artists with an exclusive evening event. Special guests will share how Dickinson has shaped their lives and works and include Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate, professor at Lehman College; National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Marie Ponsot; and Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Alice Quinn, Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, will moderate. Enjoy after-hours access to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and extended hours at Shop in the Garden and the Cafe.
Perennial Garden
Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club and producer of the PBS Series The United States of Poetry
Marilyn Nelson, author of The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems
Moderated by Robert N. Casper, Programs Director, Poetry Society of America
Perennial Garden
Christopher Benfey, scholar and author of Emily Dickinson and the Problem of Others
Jerome Charyn, author of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson
Moderated by Alice Quinn, Executive Director, Poetry Society of America
Perennial Garden
3 p.m.
Susan Howe, author of My Emily Dickinson
Stephen Stepanchev, first Poet Laureate of Queens and author of American Poetry Since 1945
Moderated by Robert N. Casper, Programs Director, Poetry Society of America
5 p.m.
Lyndall Gordon, author and biographer
Joyce Carol Oates, author and professor
Moderated by Alice Quinn, Executive Director, Poetry Society of America