PEMBROKE, NC – Thanks to a partnership of the Pembroke Magazine, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Mary Livermore Library’s Friends of the Library, this Thursday at 5 p.m., poet, editor, professor emeritus, and former poet laureate of Louisiana Julie Kane will read from her work in the Thomas Assembly Room of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian, in UNCP’s Old Main Building.

English, Theatre & Foreign Languages professor Richard Vela, who helped organized her visit, said he was always impressed by her work, and that “recently, when she edited a new poetry anthology, I was glad to be able to get back in touch with her.” 

During her visit, Dr. Kane will visit ETFL professor Karen Helgeson’s ENG 2780: Writing Poetry I class, record a podcast with A&S Dean Jeff Frederick, and give a public reading at the MSAI at 5 p.m., with a reception following. 

At the evening reading, Dr. Kane will be joined by Shelby Stephenson, professor emeritus of creative writing at UNCP, former editor of Pembroke Magazine, and former North Carolina poet laureate.

Dr. Kane was poet laureate of Louisiana from 2011 to 2013, served as a Fulbright Lecturer, served as New Orleans writer in residence at Tulane University, and taught creative writing at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La. Her books include Paper Bullets(2013), Jazz Funeral(2009), Rhythm and Booze(2003), and Body and Soul(1987). With Grace Bauer, she edited Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Collection of Subversive Verse(2017), and she was associate editor of Voices of the American South(2005). At Cornell University, she studied with acclaimed North Carolina writers A.R. Ammons and Robert Morgan.

Kane also shared her thoughts about literature and poetry of the South for the 30 Brave Minutes Podcast, along with Frederick, Vela, Grimes and Aaron Cole.