ATHENS, Ga. – Gary Gildner, award-winning author of eighteen books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, returns to the University of Georgia on Thursday, Oct. 23, to read from and discuss his poems during two appearances. Gildner will conduct a question-and-answer session on writing and publishing at 4 p.m. in room 261 of Park Hall on the UGA campus. He will read from his poetry and sign books at 7:30 p.m. at Tasty World (corner of Broad and Jackson Streets).
These events – open to the public free of charge – are under the auspices of the Georgia Poetry Circuit, a consortium of colleges and universities which, for nearly twenty years, has pooled resources to bring many of the country’s best poets into the state to read and teach. Financial assistance is provided by the Georgia Arts Council; at UGA, Georgia Poetry Circuit sponsorship is provided by The Georgia Review, a quarterly journal of arts and letters.
Gildner, who currently lives on a ranch in Idaho’s Clearwater Mountains, last read in Athens in 1987. At that time he, Lee K. Abbott and Mary Hood read short stories to celebrate The Georgia Review’s 40th anniversary and that journal’s winning of the 1986 National Magazine Award in Fiction – an award earned with work by these three writers.
Gildner’s many published volumes include Blue Like the Heavens: New and Selected Poems, A Week in South Dakota (short stories), The Second Bridge (a novel), The Bunker in the Parsley Fields (winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize) and The Warsaw Sparks (a memoir about coaching a baseball team in Communist Poland). His latest work is My Grandfather’s Book: Generations of an American Family (Michigan State University Press, 2002), a memoir about Gildner’s Polish ancestry and a Foreword Magazine selection as one of the top ten university press books of the year.
A Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Poland and Czechoslovakia, Gildner has served as writer-in-residence at Reed College, Seattle University, Davidson College and elsewhere. Also, he has won two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Pushcart Prizes in fiction and nonfiction and both the William Carlos Williams and the Theodore Roethke poetry prizes. An experienced reader, Gildner has performed at the Library of Congress, the Manhattan Theatre Club and more than 300 other venues across the country.
