UA Press Poet To Read in Springdale

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Award-wining poet, Jo McDougall, will give a reading at the Poets NorthWest monthly meeting at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 7, at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale, in Room 222. The University of Arkansas Press published two of her books, and she holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arkansas. Poet C.D. Wright, also a graduate of the university’s M.F.A. program and winner of a distinguished MacArthur Fellowship, says that McDougal writes “a lean stoic line; each poem makes it mark, like spit.”

     McDougall is the author of five books of poetry: Towns Facing Railroads and From Darkening Porches, published by the University of Arkansas Press; The Woman in the Next Booth; Dirt; and Satisfied with Havoc. She is currently at work on a memoir, Daddy’s Money, about growing up in DeWitt, Arkansas.

     McDougall’s work has been adapted for film (Emerson County Shaping Dream) and a song cycle, performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble in Baltimore. An adaptation of her poetry, titled Towns Facing Railroads, was staged at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre in the spring of 2006. Her honors include awards from the Academy of American Poets, DeWitt Wallace/Reader’s Digest foundation, and the Arkansas Porter Prize. She was recently inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. She lives in Leawood, Kan.