Poet B.H. Fairchild to read from own work for S.A. Yoder Lecture Series Jan. 10

 

Event: S.A Yoder Lecture – poetry reading by B.H. Fairchild
Date and time: Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006, at 7 p.m.
Location: Rieth Recital Hall, Goshen College Music Center
Cost: Free
Event sponsor: S.A. Yoder Lecture Series and the Goshen College English Department

GOSHEN, Ind. – Poet B.H. Fairchild will read from his work as the guest in the 2006 S.A. Yoder Lecture Series on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006, at 7 p.m. in Rieth Recital Hall, Goshen College Music Center, followed by a reception and book signing. This event is free and open to the public.

Fairchild grew up in small towns in Texas, Oklahoma and southwest Kansas. His poetry honors the landscape of the Midwest and the skill of the craftsman, including his father, who operated a lathe in a machine shop when he was growing up.

 

Fairchild is the author of four books of poetry, including “Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest,” which won the National Book Critic's Circle Award, and “The Art of the Lathe,” a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the California Book Award, the PEN Center West Poetry Award and an award from the Texas Institute of Letters. A revised edition of an earlier book, “Local Knowledge,” has just been published by Norton.

 

The recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller/Bellagio and NEA Fellowships, Fairchild was also honored with the Arthur Rense Poetry Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Aiken Taylor Award from Sewanee Review for the body of his work. He lives in Claremont, Calif., and teaches at California State University at San Bernardino.

 

The S.A. Yoder Lecture Series honors Dr. Samuel A. Yoder, a professor at Goshen College from 1930 to 1935 and again from 1946 until his death in 1970. During his career, he was a Fulbright lecturer at Anatolia College in Greece, Smith-Mundt lecturer at the University of Hue in Vietnam, visiting professor at Taiwan University in Formosa, welfare officer under the United Nations in Egypt and Goshen College Study-Service Term leader in Jamaica. Gifts to the series by his family, students and friends have made the endowed lectureship possible.

 

Previous S.A. Yoder lecturers have included Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, Newberry Award Winner Madeleine L’Engle, humorist Garrison Keillor, Haitian fiction writer Edwidge Danticat, Indiana essayist Scott Russell Sanders and the late American poet Denise Levertov.

 

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

 

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu/.