UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING PRESS RELEASE:

Avant-garde poet and activist Rachel Levitsky will give a free public reading Thursday, Feb. 20, as part of the University of Wyoming Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program Visiting Writers Series.

Levitsky, founder and co-director of Belladonna -- an event and publication series of feminist avant-garde poetics -- will read from her works at 7 p.m. at Night Heron Books, 107 E. Ivinson St. A reception and a book signing follow the reading. During her visit, she also will meet with UW MFA students.

The author currently teaches writing and poetics at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is well-known as a poet of both politically and socially engaged writing. Levitsky‘s work has been printed in numerous magazines; she has published two full-length collections of poetry; and three of her poetic plays have been launched as theatrical productions.

Her recent book, “The Story of My Accident is Ours,” tackles a range of concerns: transgendered bodies, social movements, management of the emotions, and countless other subjects.

She and Christian Hawkey started the Office of Recuperative Strategies, a mobile research unit for cultural sustainability that has been located in a range of locales, including Amsterdam, Boulder, Berlin, Brooklyn, The Holland Tunnel and the University of Leipzig. Levitsky also has collaborated with, and worked alongside, artists such as photographer B. Wurtz.

For more information about Levitsky’s reading and the MFA’s Visiting Writers Series, contact the MFA program at (307) 766-6453 or visit http://www.uwyo.edu/creativewriting/.

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