April is National Poetry Month and Clark County Poet Laureate, Heather Lang-Cassera, is partnering with Poetry Promise, Inc. to host two online events featuring South Dakota Poet Laureate Emeritus Lee Ann Roripaugh:
- a free Poetry Reading by Roripaugh on Thursday, April 8th, at 7:00 pm
- a free Writing Workshop led by Roripaugh on Saturday, April 10th, at 2:00 pm
Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of five volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, Tsunami Vs. the Fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019) was listed as a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards, and named a best volume of poetry in 2019 by the New York Public Library. Her second volume, Year of the Snake (Southern Illinois University Press), was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004. Her first book, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. The recipient of a 2003 Archibald Bush Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship, she was also named the 2004 winner of the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for Best Creative Writing awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize.
Her short stories have been shortlisted as stories of note in the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and five of her essays have been shortlisted as essays of note for the Best American Essays anthology. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. The South Dakota State Poet Laureate from 2015-2019, Roripaugh is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review. She is also a faculty mentor for the Carlow University low-residency M.F.A. in Writing and served as a 2012 Kundiman faculty mentor alongside Li-Young Lee and Srikanth Reddy.
To register for these events, contact Clark County Poet Laureate Heather Lang-Cassera at heather@cassera.net. These events have been made possible thanks to Poetry Promise Inc., Nevada Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Clark County Poet Laureate. The Clark County Poet Laureate program is subsidized by the Clark County Public Art Fund and managed by the Winchester Dondero Cultural Center. More information about the Clark County Poet Laureate Program can be found by visiting: https://tinyurl.com/yba9duq
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Clark County is a dynamic and innovative organization dedicated to providing top-quality service with integrity, respect and accountability. With jurisdiction over the world-famous Las Vegas Strip and covering an area the size of New Jersey, Clark is the nation’s 11th-largest county and provides extensive regional services to 2.4 million citizens and 45.6 million visitors a year (2019). Included are the nation’s 9th-busiest airport, air quality compliance, social services and the state’s largest public hospital, University Medical Center. The County also provides municipal services that are traditionally provided by cities to 1.1 million residents in the unincorporated area. Those include fire protection, roads and other public works, parks and recreation, and planning and development.