The Denison University Beck Lecture Series will open its presentations for the spring 2006 semester with a reading by the winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writer Award. Dana Roeser will read from her works at 4 p.m. on Tuesday (Jan. 24) in the Barney Davis Hall Board Room.

Roeser's first book of poems, "Beautiful Motion," also won the Samuel French Morse Prize given by Northeastern University Press, publisher of the volume, and judged by Ellen Bryant Voigt, who wrote "Roeser's protagonist, like the sly poet herself, seems to defeat convention by earnest failure at it. Yet these accessible, energetic poems are full of quiet insight, usually presented as minor capitulation, major consequences left understated."

"Jesus at the Help Desk" took second place in the Indiana Review Poetry Prize competition in 2003 and "descant" was winner of the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award for best poem published in 2003. Among her other poems are: "The Fire of London," "Bloom Where You're Planted," "Suck and Purl," and "Midwestern Summer: My Dead Mother as Muse."

Roeser is currently the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington at George Washington University. She earned her bachelor's degree at Tulane University, and both a master's and master of fine arts degree at the University of Virginia. She also has completed course work for a doctorate at the University of Utah.

Among the publications that have carried Roeser's poems are The Antioch Review, Ellipsis, Hiram Poetry Review and The Spoon River Poetry Review. She has several works forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Shade, New Millennium Writings and Paterson Literary Review.

Calendar Listing:

CALENDAR LISTING: Denison University, Granville -- Beck Lecture Series presents poet Dana Roeser, winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writer Award; 4 p.m., Tuesday (Jan. 24), Barney Davis Hall Board Room (200 West Loop). Free and open to the public. To confirm information call 740-587-6207.

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.

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