Peter Balakian to be Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at USF

PanARMENIAN.Net - During the week of February 13, Peter Balakian will be Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of South Florida (USF) and will be visiting classes in the departments of English, Sociology, Africana Studies, and the Honors College, The Armenian Weekly reports. He also will be spending time with the Digital Heritage work group in the USF Library which is actively working to save ancient churches in Armenia.

Balakian will give a public poetry reading on February 16 in CWY 206 with a reception and book signing to follow.

Previous USF Distinguished Scholar’s in Residence have included historians, philosophers, and literary theorists as well as poets Jorie Graham, Terrence Hayes, Li-Young Lee, and novelist and playwright Caryl Phillips.

Peter Balakian is the author of seven books of poems, four books of prose, and two collaborative translations. Ozone Journal won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry; Black Dog of Fate won the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for the Art of the Memoir, and was a best book of the year for the New York Times, the LA Times, and Publisher’s Weekly; The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response won the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times Best Seller. His translation of Grigoris Balakian’s Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide was a Washington Post book of the year. Vice and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture was published in 2016. He is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities, Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Colgate University.