News Release — Februrary 6, 2012

RICHARD SIKEN Reading | Book Signing | Q&A

Thursday, February 9, 2012
3:30 p.m. Reading + Book Signing + Q&A
Admission is free and open to the public

SAN MARCOS, TX — This Thursday the Wittliff Collections at Texas State are pleased to present nationally recognized poet Richard Siken. Siken's poetry collection Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, a Lambda Literary Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In a recent Bomblog interview, Siken says, “Crush, at its core, is about rupture. The desire to touch, the gesture of touching, becomes dangerous, damaging, after the hand, withheld for so long, finally makes an attempt at contact.”

Siken's poems have also appeared in The Iowa Review, Conjunctions, Indiana Review and Forklift, Ohio, as well as in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2000 and Legitimate Dangers. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by Texas State’s English Department, the Burdine Johnson Foundation, and the Wittliff Collections. Books will be for sale by the University Bookstore. www.kapliterarycenter.com/Richard Siken will also read at Texas State’s Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center in Kyle on Friday, Feburary 10, at 7:30 p.m.