The Denison University Beck Lecture Series, begun in 1964, opens its 2004/2005 season with a young poet whose first collection of poetry, "Facts for Visitors," was published earlier this year. Srikanth Reddy will speak at 8 p.m. on Tuesday (Sept. 14) in the Board Room of Barney Davis Hall (200 West Loop Road on the Denison campus). The lecture is free and open to the public.

Reddy is the William Vaughan Moody Writer-in-Residence at the University of Chicago. He earned his bachelor's degree at Harvard as well as his doctorate and a master of fine arts degree at the University of Iowa. He has held a Diane Middlebrook Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Mellon Foundation fellowship and a Whiting Foundation fellowship in the humanities. He won two Bok Center Awards for Excellence in Teaching at Harvard (2001 and 2002).

His poems have appeared in various journals, including APR, Grand Street, Fence and Ploughshares, and his critical writing has been featured in publications such as The New Republic, The Chicago Tribune and American Literature. Reddy also has poems which will appear in three forthcoming anthologies. Since 1999 he has served as literacy director of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Trust, an early childhood literacy program in Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, India.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

For press inquiries:

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Barbara Stambaugh

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