The Beck Lecture Series at Denison University will open its spring semester calendar by hosting Judith Ortiz Cofer, novelist, poet and essay writer. She will read from her works at 8 p.m. on Thursday (Feb. 1) in the Faculty Lounge in Slayter Hall. Her presentation is free and open to the public.

A native of Puerto Rico, Cofer is author of the novel, "The Line of the Sun," and of a collection of essays and poetry, "Silent Dancing." She also has written two books of poetry, "Terms of Survival" and "Reaching for the Mainland," as well as a volume titled "The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry." Another Cofer book is a collection of short stories, "An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio," which was named a Best Book of the Year in 1995/96 by the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA also awarded her the first Pura Belpre medal by REFORMA in 1996.

Her poetry, essays and articles are widely published and her works have appeared in Glamour, The Georgia Review, the Kenyon Review and in several anthologies, including The Best American Essays, The Norton Book of Women's Lives, The Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Prize Stories. She served a Rockefeller Foundation Residency at the Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, in 1999 and was winner of the Hugh J. Luke Award given by the Prairie Schooner journal in 1999 for a quartet of poems.

Cofer serves as the Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia where she has taught since 1984. Winner of the University's Albert Christ-Janer Award for Creative Research in the Arts and Humanities in 1998, she was featured at the August 1999 opening convocation ceremony where she read "Convocation Poem." She also has served on the faculty at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Macon (Ga.) College and the University of Miami. She earned her bachelor's degree at Augusta College and her master's degree at Florida Atlantic University. In 1977 she was an English Speaking Union of America Fellow at Oxford University.

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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