For immediate release: March 18, 2008

BLOOMSBURG — Poet Ellen Doré Watson will read at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania as part of the Big Dog Reading Series on Thursday, March 20, at 4 p.m. in Monty’s Assembly Room. The reading is open to the public free of charge.

Watson is director of the Poetry Center at Smith College and poetry editor of The Massachusetts Review. She is the author of four books of poems, including “We Live in Bodies” and “Ladder Music,” winner of the New England/New York award from Alice James Books. Her most recent book is “This Sharpening,” published by Tupelo Press. In 1998, Library Journal named Watson “one of the 24 poets for the 21st century.”

She has received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, two Pushcart nominations and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Watson has translated a dozen books from Brazilian Portuguese, including “The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado.” She also co-translates contemporary Arabic poetry with Saadi Simawe, an associate professor of English at Grinnell College.
The Big Dog Reading Series is sponsored by the Bloomsburg University College of Liberal Arts and the Department of English.

Bloomsburg University is one of 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The university serves approximately 8,000 students, offering comprehensive programs of study in the colleges of Professional Studies, Business, Liberal Arts and Science and Technology.