Writers in the Library celebrates Valentine’s with poetry, chocolate

Three poetesses to slam, perform verse

Ah, l’amour. Maybe not so much. Who needs romantic candlelight when you can have chocolate and poetry? Writers in the Library will feature three local poets, Marilyn Kallet, Kali Meister and Julia Nance, who will perform their verse on Monday, Feb. 14 at 7 p.m. in the Lindsay Young Auditorium at Hodges Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Kallet is the author of nine books, and will read from her most recent publication, Circe, After Hours, published by the BkMk Press at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines, and she has won the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship in poetry, and was named Outstanding Woman in the Arts by the Knoxville YWCA in 2000. Marilyn Kallet directed the creative writing program at the University of Tennessee for seventeen years and now holds the Hodges Chair for Distinguished Teaching in English.

Meister, who is currently pursuing a psychology degree at UT, has dabbled in a bit of all performance art, including acting in motion pictures such as Leap of Faith, Dazed and Confused, JFK and I’ll Take the Cheesecake. She has toured comedy clubs in the Southwest, and has directed Talking With at the Oak Ridge Playhouse and the 2003 UT run of The Vagina Monologues. She has recently been published in The Pegasus Review and Prism.

Nance, who studied Creative Writing at UT, has garnered numerous accolades for her slamming skills, winning the Chicago Green Mill Slam and placing in the LEAF Slam. She performs in Knoxville frequently and shares the title of Knoxville’s Slam Mistress with Rhea Sunshine. Nance presents a Themed Slam held every second Friday at the Emporium on Gay Street, and will have a two-day show at the Knox Word Spoken Word Showcase to be held at the Black Box on April 8-9. Her work has been published in Breathing the Same Air, Number One, Savoy as well as a self-published chapbook, syntaxxx.

The Writers in the Library series is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Libraries and the Creative Writing Program of the UT English Department. For further information, please contact Jo Anne Deeken, Head of Technical Services, UT Libraries, at 974-6905 or R.B. Morris, Writer in Residence, UT Libraries, at 974-3004.