Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and author of seven published books, is the next writer to appear on Denison University's Beck Lecture Series. Known as a cultural critic, Koestenbaum will give a lecture at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday (April 12) in the Slayter Hall Faculty Lounge. He will read from his works at 8 p.m. that evening, also in the faculty lounge. Both events are free and open to the public.

A professor of English at the City University of New York since 1997, he previously taught at Yale. He is amagna cum laudeand Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College, earning his master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and his doctorate at Princeton University.

Among his books are:Cleavage: Essays on Sex, Stars and Aesthetics(Ballantine, 2000);The Milk of Inquiry(Persea, 1999);Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon(Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995); andThe Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire(Poseidon, 1993). Penguin/Lipper is due to publish his book on Andy Warhol this year. Koestenbaum also wrote the libretto forJackie O, which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and premiered on March 14, 1997. Music was by Michael Daugherty.

Koestenbaum is a winner of the 1994 Whiting Writer's Award and co-winner of the 1989 "Discovery"/The Nation poetry contest. He held a Morse Fellowship at Yale in 1990/91 and a Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities in 1987/88. His essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the London Review of Books and The New Yorker. He has reviewed the biographies of Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor and Enrico Caruso.

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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