New Year's Eve reading at Enders Island features National Book Award poet | Press Releases

Poet Mark Doty, honored last month in New York with the 2008 National Book Award for his poetry collection, "Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems," will do a reading of his poetry on New Years Eve, Dec. 31, at 7 p.m. at The Chapel of Our Lady of the Assumption on Enders Island, on Long Island Sound in Mystic, Conn. The program is presented by the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing program and the public is welcome. Admission is free.

Dr. Michael White, professor of English at Fairfield and director of the MFA program, said, "Mark's latest award is especially meaningful because it recognizes his work over a nearly 25-year span. The theme for our MFA program is 'Inspire the writer within,' and certainly I know our guest faculty will bring a great deal of inspiration to our gifted students."

Anita Shreve, author of 14 novels, including the Oprah's Book Club pick "The Pilot's Wife" is also a guest faculty member in the low residency program in which students meet together twice a year to participate in intensive 10-day residencies with nationally-renowned writers - and then in between residencies work independently with personal mentors to develop their own writing style and skills in fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry.

Fairfield University is now accepting applications for the next MFA Creative Writing Program which begins in July 2009. For more detailed program and admission information visit www.fairfield.edu/mfa.