Arts & Culture

Piotr Gwiazda, an associate professor of English, has been selected for a prestigious list “Best Books of Poetry in English 2015.” The list was compiled by Adam Zdrodowski, a poet and translator who has published three collections of poetry and translated authors such as Gertrude Stein and William S. Burroughs. The list included six top poetry books published in 2015 from around the world, including Gwiazda’s Aspects of Strangers which received strong praise from Zdrodowski: “At first, the poems may seem simple, and yet it quickly turns out their simplicity is misleading. Simple phrases keep building up, bringing new pieces of information, sometimes… Continue Reading UMBC professor’s book selected as one of six best books of poetry in 2015

Lia Purpura, writer in residence in UMBC’s English department, recently was a guest on WYPR’s “What are you reading?” segment to recommend essential reading for over the holidays and the new year. Purpura, who is an award winning poet and essayist, recommended The Essential Tales of Chekhov edited by Richard Ford and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. “Chekhov’s stories make inner lives completely bare,” Purpura shared on the program. By reading Chekhov, Purpura notes “you are shown your micro miscalculations and all those inner moral scales that you’ve got jangling around are laid bare in different characters…that sense of being seen and found… Continue Reading UMBC writer in residence recommends essential reading for the holidays on WYPR