Award-winning writer Meg Kearney will visit campus on Tuesday, Sept. 23, the second in this fall’s author series. Kearney will follow poet, editor, and writer Mike Young, who visited campus Sept. 9.

“She’s a terrific author in many genres – poetry, young adult fiction and children’s books,” said Assistant Professor of Writing of Literature Elizabeth Powell in an email interview. “I wanted to bring her to JSC because she is a generous person and mentor to aspiring writers, and she has a wide range of experiences in many different creative writing careers that our students can benefit from hearing about.”

Kearney has worked for the National Book Foundation in New York and is the founder and director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Pine Manor College in Massachusetts.

Powell said, “Under her direction the program has grown tremendously, and is now one of the top 20 programs in the country, as well as having a highly realized diversity mission.”

Kearney’s book of poetry, “Home By Now,” published by Four Way Books in 2009, won the PEN New England LL Winship award.
Her more recent children’s book “Trouper,” published by Scholastic in 2013, has been chosen one of the most “Diverse and Impressive Picture Books of 2013” by the International Reading Association; one of the 2013-14 season’s best picture books by the Christian Science Monitor, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and Bank Street College of Education; one of the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People of 2014; and a 2013 Association of Children’s Librarians of Northern California Distinguished Book.

Kearney’s poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in Poetry, Agni and Ploughshares, among others. Her work also is featured most recently in the anthologies “Sinatra: But Buddy, I’m a Kind of Poem” (Entasis Press, 2008), “The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review” (Bellevue Literary Press, 2008), and “The Incredible Sestina Anthology” (Write Bloody, 2013). She was the co-editor of “Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews” (Akron University Press, 2005).

Kearney is scheduled to read at 5:30 p.m. in Stearns Cinema.