YSU Poetry Center hosts noted authors this week

The Youngstown State University Poetry Center and Etruscan Press is coordinating a four-day outreach program featuring noted authors Remica L. Bingham and Aaron Poochigian, Monday, Nov. 13 through Thursday, Nov. 16.

The authors will meet with students from East High School, Choffin Career & Technical Center, Youngstown Early College, Chaney High School, and Austintown Fitch High School. Students at the five schools have received free copies of the authors’ books, as well as study guides. At Chaney High School, Bingham and Poochigian will award three monetary prizes for a one-page writing contest whose entries will have been judged previously.

Additionally, Bingham will participate in a program at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 15, at the YWCA of Youngstown, while both authors also will address participants in writing classes for incarcerated men and women via Skype.

At 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 13, the Friends of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County and Etruscan Press will cosponsor a program titled, “An Evening of Literary Dialog,” at the Main Library, 305 Wick Ave. Bingham and Poochigian will be joined by Steve Reese, a professor of literature at YSU who has published three volumes of poetry. The event is free and open to the public.

On Thursday, Nov. 16, Bingham conducts a public reading at the annual ACTION Clergy Caucus Fellowship Breakfast, held between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., at the Newport Public Library, 3730 Market Street.

Bingham, who serves as director of writing and faculty development at Old Dominion University, has published two collections of poetry: “Conversion,” winner of the prestigious Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and “What We Make of Flesh,” shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. New York-based author and translator Poochigian recently published “Mr. Either/Or,” a detective novel composed entirely in verse.

Partnering with YSU, Etruscan is a non-profit literary press working to produce and promote books that nurture the dialogue among genres, cultures, and voices. Etruscan publishes books of poems, novels, short stories, creative non-fiction, criticism, translation, and anthologies. For more information, please contact Thomas Welsh, outreach coordinator of the Etruscan Press, at tom@etruscanpress.org, or 330-792-7936.