National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty will be the keynote speaker at a luncheon during the Lanier Library’s Poetry Festival Saturday, April 26.

He has written eight books of poetry and five nonfiction books, including the memoir, “Dog Years” a New York Times best seller.

Doty lives in New York City and is a distinguished professor at Rutgers University. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford and the Iowa Writers Workshop, and has won numerous awards and fellow- ships for his poetry. He is the only American poet to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Among his books available on the Lanier Library shelves are “Dog Years” and “Fire to Fire,” his collection that won the 2008 National Book Award in Poetry.

Former Poet Laureate Philip Levine said, “If it were mine to invent the poet to complete the century of William Carlos Wil-

liams and Wallace Stevens, I would create Mark Doty just as he is, a maker of big, risky, fearless poems in which ordinary human experi-ence becomes music.”

The catered luncheon will be held from 12:30-2:30 p.m. in the Holy Cross Parish Hall, during which time Doty will speak on po- etry as a cultural force in America and hold a book signing. Tickets are required for the luncheon.

Visit www.lanierlib.org to download a registration form for the luncheon and/or the writing workshops held throughout the day. For more information call 828- 859-9535 or stop by the library during open hours.

– article submitted by Gina Malone