Award-Winning Poet Brenda Hillman to Visit UConn as 59th Wallace Stevens Poet

Internationally acclaimed poet Brenda Hillman will visit the University of Connecticut in March as the 59th Wallace Stevens Poet, part of UConn’s longstanding Wallace Stevens Poetry Program.

Hillman will give a public reading on Wednesday, March 11, at 7 p.m. in the Konover Auditorium of the Dodd Center, 405 Babbidge Road, Storrs, CT 06269. The event is free and open to the public and will feature readings by award-winning UConn student poets prior to Hillman’s appearance.

Hillman will also give a special reading for E.O. Smith High School students on Tuesday, March 10, as part of the program’s commitment to literary outreach and arts education.

Hillman is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Practical Water, which won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry; Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, winner of the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry; Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days; and her most recent collection, In a Few Minutes Before Later. In 2016, she was named chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Her honors also include the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Hillman’s visit is organized by the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program Committee in UConn’s Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Funding is provided by the Aetna Chair of Writing, the English Department Speaker’s Fund, the UConn Humanities Institute, and private donations from English faculty and community supporters through the 2024 UConn Gives Campaign.

For more information, please visit the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program website.